I recently bought a Fuji S2500 after spending too much time trying to find something reasonably priced in compact form I opted for this bridge camera costing £180 ( $ 260 )
it has 18x zoom , HD video , has low light setting and other settings by turning a wheel on top of camera , and 12 million pixels .it can be set manually if you prefer but I have not tried those functions yet .
here are some pics .
1. Admiralty arch at 2 am on auto setting with flash . both pics were same size before I messed up trying to make them upload here .
2. Admiralty arch at 2 am on ambient light setting .no flash .the bigger brighter picture .
3 and 4 inside a dim cave on ambient light setting . the pics show more light and detail than I could see with my eyes .and the person in the corner was hardly visible to the eye .easily over 50 ft away and no zoom in any pics .
maybe show more pics after typing this .
it has an optical viewfinder which is very useful in bright sunlight although the lcd screen is a good size and very clear .
it can do super macro or you can narrow the field of view .
a cheap camera which may suit your needs
I did not want to spend fortunes because the family use it and are not very gentle with things .pic quality was better before I resized these pics to upload here .

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