Mar 02, 2013 11:57 AM
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The best way to look at it would be to present its pros and cons directly; so here they are:
Pros:
Great zoom in this price. Its just the optical zoom that is needed, I never needed the digital zoom part (plus digital zoom is useless too).
The AA batteries. I considered these while buying this camera and it worked. Quite a few times I ran out of battery power on the go and getting another set of AA batteries was way too much easier that to charge an inbuilt proprietary battery again.
Manual and Custom modes are very useful. You can set the exposure (obviously), shutter speed and the f value too. It supports a wide variety of ISO settings which also make the camera handy when a DSLR is not available.
The built is strong. I mean it works even when I dropped it accidentally in the mud. I cleaned it up immediately and shook it to force the water drops off before it could cause any potential damage.
Battery lasts a lot. Enough for you to take a full day (about 12 hours with the EVF) of random shots in a festival like surroundings (where you want shoot things in every 10-15 minutes all day) while constantly zooming in and out (zooming takes a lot of power as it makes use of a mechanical motor, all of it without flash).
You can enjoy highly diverse depth of fields using that zoom and can shoot macros from 5 meters away. It is useful with sightseeing, tours and all.
The Electronic ViewFinder (EVF) is a real power saver and an aid to image stabilization. It is easier to stabilize while resting the camera on you head.
Cons (this is going to be a long list) :
The speed is annoying. The response time is very slow, it takes almost 2 seconds for the camera to be ready for another shot even when used with a Class 10 memory card.
Indoor shooting is shameful. Most of the shots get blurred.
Colours. The colours are awful, lifeless. Even a 6K range camera takes more vivid pictures. Lifeless photos is a loss of cheerful memories to me.
Weight - The camera weighs too much. I know with this design it should but why go for this design when the slim ones are better (or at least competitive) in almost every aspect.
Size - Its is too bulky. Be it now or later you will find it a headache to carry it along.
Smile and face detection suck. When the other camera placed adjacently detect 10 faces above ten pairs of shoulders, this Fuji thing detects 8 (6 of them above the shoulders and rest on the moon). Smile detection is useless, I mean nobody is going to keep saying cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeese until they feel like pooping while waiting for the camera to shoot, which it does not do.
Flash makes the deal 3 out of 5 times, rest of the time it feels like the flash got reflected of the camera's barrel and ruined the photo (I do not know what exactly happens, but the image gets out of focus).
Autofocus is real slow. At times, it honestly tries for a few seconds and then tells you that it cannot focus when the object has gone much far from where you wanted to shoot it.
Image stabilization does half its work. It is less efficient then the competitors.
Panaroma mode tests your will to take a panaromic shot. It is a three shot sequence in which you need to match the edges and then the camera would stich the shots for you. This camera does not have sweep panaroma like Sony and others, remember.
The camera forgets the time every now and then. I meam when a mobile phone can make the time persist even after removing the battery, what's wrong with this device!
It won't tell you the battery status until it gets low. The camera uses 3-Bar notification icon for battery which only flashes when the last bar is left, rest of the time it is hidden.
It only has four colour modes B&W, Standard, Fine and Chrome. Standard and Fine feel no different and the Chrome thing is useless, at least for me. It would be better it was Sepia or Vivid.
Honestly I wish I would have bought a slim point and shoot like Ixus or a Sony which have much better colours and are light and at least my family could use it as well (they don't feel comfortable shooting when such a big thing with lots of lots of buttons is handed to them). The only things that make me happy about this camera is the zoom and AA batteries support.
Also the other variants of Fuji in this section (the S2950 and the S4500) follow the same legacy as most of the problems is within the software that they design which won't have changed for sure, but I don't clearly know, read about them first.
Consider those pros and cons and decide yourself now. :-)
