In terms of design and style the Fuji Finepix S9600 is as close as you will get to a digital SLR without buying one. It dwarfs almost every other compact digital camera on the market. This means that there is a much larger lens unit on the Finepix S9600 than on other digital cameras. The idea behind this is quite simple. A larger lens is easier to engineer and should therefore lead to better quality photos then you generally capture with a consumer digital camera.