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.