Fujifilm Cameras

Image Quality
Overall the outdoor shots that the Finepix 3500 were good without being anything out of the ordinary. One weakness that I found was that the camera struggled when there was sharp contrast in the shot. An example of this can be found in the Outdoor 1 and 2 shots. The area to look out for is in the trees and bushes. They tend to come out darker than I would like to see and this leads to a loss of detail especially in a final print.

Digital cameras find indoor shots more difficult. The Finepix S3500 sits somewhere in the middle rank when it comes to indoor shots. You should be able to produce acceptable indoor shots with this camera.

The colour reproduction was passed. It reproduces red, yellows and blues well. One colour where I though it could do better was on greens.

The Finepix S3500 scored above average marks for macro or close up photography. Digital cameras can add a tint to the image when working close up. This camera produced a clear image with true colours.

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Features
The camera has a 1.5" LCD screen for composing and reviewing images as well as accessing the menus. The LCD screen has a brightness control plus a feature that brightens the screen in lowlight. This does make a considerable difference in twilight, but when the light is very low it has little effect.

The Finepix S3500 has a pop up flash unit that has a range of 3.5m. The flash modes available are automatic where the camera decides if flash is required, always on, always off, red eye reduction, slow synchro and slow synchro with red eye reduction. You can also adjust the brightness of the flash. This is useful for when you are using fill in flash. This is where you are looking for the camera to fill in shadows rather than give a bright blast of light.

Taking a step up from simply placing the Finepix S3500 in automatic mode you can use scene modes. There are four available and their role is to help you to take the best possible picture in challenging lighting and composition situations. The four are portrait, landscape, sports and night shots.

For close up work there is a macro mode that lets you get in as close as 10cms from the subject.

When you would like to appear in the picture yourself there is a self timer with a ten second delay.

A further step up offers a semi manual mode for wont of a better description. By setting the camera in this mode you can use features such as exposure compensation, white balance and aperture priority. You can also adjust the sharpness of each image.

Movies can be shot by the Finepix S3500, but they are limited. There are two resolutions you can choose from 320x240 and 160x120. In either resolution footage is captured at a rate of 10 frames per second.

Fuji supply all the necessary cables and software to connect the Finepix S3500 to a computer and a television set.

To further enhance the camera you can buy separately a wide angle and a telephoto lens adapter.

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Ease of Use
Aside from its extended zoom lens I would say that the Finepix S3500 also scores very highly for ease of use. I have always like the colour coded Fuji menu systems and I find them less intimidating than any other brand. I will admit that this camera offers less features than some of its competitors, but this upside of this is that it gives you a camera that is a lot easier to get started with.

The Fujifilm FinePix S5500 Zoom is the successor to the 3 megapixel Fujifilm FinePix S5000 Zoom that I reviewed back in June 2004. The Finepix S5500 looks very much like a traditional SLR camera in terms of styling, but it is actually more like a compact digital camera in size and weight. Despite its diminutive dimensions, the Fujifilm FinePix S5500 Zoom sports a massive 10x optical zoom which is equivalent to 37-370mm on a 35mm camera. The Finepix S5500 has a number of improvements when compared to its predecessor, including a 4 megapixel sensor, histogram playback, custom white balance control, 100% frame coverage and higher quality video mode. Have Fujifilm added enough improvements to the Finepix S5500 Zoom so that it can still remain competitive today? Find out in my review.

The Fuji FinePix S9000 ($699) is a full-featured, high resolution ultra zoom 9 Megapixel camera. The S9000 (also known as the S9500) uses Fuji's 5th generation SuperCCD sensor, with the most noticeable change since the previous generation sensor being the lack of an interpolated mode. The sensor is nine Megapixel and so are the resulting images. (For the technically included, the sensor still does interpolate to a higher resolution before downsizing to your selected size.)

The S9000 uses Fuji's Real Photo Technology which allows for lower noise at high ISOs than comparable cameras, fast performance, and good battery life. Fuji says that the camera's good high ISO performance allows the S9000 to take sharp pictures without the need for image stabilization (we'll see how well it performs in a bit).

The other big feature on the S9000 is its 10.7X zoom lens. While most ultra zoom lenses are 38 - 380 mm (or similar), the S9000's lens starts at 28 mm for some good wide-angle action.

There's much more to talk about, so let's just move into the review now.

What's in the Box?

The FinePix S9000 has an average bundle. Inside the box, you'll find:

• The 9.0 effective Megapixel FinePix S9000 camera
• 16MB xD Picture Card
• Four AA alkaline batteries
• Lens cap w/retaining strap
• Lens hood
• Shoulder strap
• A/V cable
• USB cable
• CD-ROM featuring FinePix CX software
• 143 page camera manual (printed)

The S9000 comes with a tiny 16MB xD Picture Card, which holds just three photos at the highest quality setting. That makes a larger memory card a requirement, and I'd suggest 512MB or even 1GB as good starter sizes. One of the nice features of the S9000 is its dual memory card slots, support both xD and CompactFlash cards. The CF slot supports Type II cards, including the Microdrive. Since CompactFlash cards are cheaper and generally faster than xD cards, I'd recommend sticking with those. The S9000 takes advantage of high speed CompactFlash cards, and probably the "M-type" fast xD cards as well.