S4;;Kyocera SL400

[Chamnan]

As we known that Kyocera stopped their productions of digital camera; But I also see many new cameras come out with the Kyocera's features......S4 looks like Kyocera SL 400,,,,,,10x optical zoom 37--370 mm (38--380 mm) lens of Kyocera M410r , goes to many brands, fuji s5600 and S4 and.....I wonder this 10x zoom must be supplied by " a supplier ". It is not from those camera makers.

[Rex914]

I was about to believe you, especially when I saw this picture:

http://testcentret.idg.se/qbild/produkter/stora/kyocera_sl400r_stor.jpg

But, you're wrong. And that's 3x optical zoom BTW. :)

There's a lot more to a lens than optical zoom or even focal length. It's speed matters. By speed, I mean it's aperture or more commonly, it's F-number.

The S4 has a constant aperture of f/3.5.

The Kyocera camera you describe has a far superior lens that's f/2.8-3.1. It also looks drastically different, so even if you didn't know anything about lenses, you could tell. Can't you see that it's a much fatter lens?

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/m410/m410_front_blk.jpg

The Fuji also has a different lens that's f/3.2-3.5. It looks somewhat similar to the Kyocera lens, but trust me, it's completely different.

http://www.rbbtoday.com/news/20050728/050728_s5200.jpg

Some companies do share lenses, but they almost never share lenses of this type because the camera is built around them. I do know that Pentax shares some standard 3x (38-114mm) lenses with Casio and a few other companies, but that's because it's such a standard format. Cameras can share LCD screens, processors, and sensors, but lenses are much harder to share because they can vary so much in size and purpose.