Fujifilm FinePix 2400 Zoom

I recently purchased a Fujifilm Finepix 2400Zoom digital camera on recommendation of the owner of my local camera shop. In my price range he advised that it would suit my particular needs best. I am using it for close up clinical photographs using the zoom facility. These have to be taken quickly with minimum fuss in a busy clinic.

This opinion is only about this aspect of the camera as previous opinions written on Ciao have described the other features.

My problem with my old 35mm camera was that it was difficult to balance the colour under a mixture artificial clinical lights and sunlight, and the pictures I obtained were often of poor quality. The 2400zoom has an easy to use facility to correct white balance for different lighting situations in the menu program. The camera's built in flash unit can be switched off to prevent glare and caused by reflection from skin.

This digital camera seems to have solved this problem as I can view the result on the LCD screen immediately so I know that I have a successful picture. It does not take long to download to my computer for a view on a larger screen if I want to ensure sufficient detail. Images not wanted can be deleted, and photograph's retaken with ease.

The photo's can then be loaded into microsoft powerpoint for lectures and projected for lectures.
At this stage I do not know if the quality of the photographs will be reduced significantly when projected onto very large screens, but it seems ok on my 2ft by 2ft screen.

One disadvantage with digital photography currently is that if you wish to use a traditional slide projector, slides cannot be produce directly from digital data, so that one has to photograph the digital photograph with a normal 35mm camera.

My main grouse with the camera is that every time you switch off the camera the macro facility is cancelled and you have to reset it, although this can be done quickly, it's a bit irritating.

Overall I am very pleased with my results so far as I can take lots of photo's and patients are more interested and compliantas they can see the results on the LCD screen.

updated bit - SIZE IS IMPORTANT

Previously I forgot to mention that the quality of the image can be manipulated. There are three choices for file size and quality of image. Briefly to get the best possible pictures the camera setting should be 1600 (file size 1600x1200, and the image quality should be set to fine. Set to normal still gives a good quality image. However the setting 1600 /fine would only allow 10 pictures on the standard 8MB card. Set on normal this would increase to about 19 pictures and at basic 39. Cards with larger memories allow more pictures to be stored. The largest card currently available is 64MB (cost £80 approx). This would allow 82 pictures on the 1600/fine setting. At the other extreme this card would permit about 660 pictures at 640 file size and normal quality. This is the setting most suitable for pictures to be displayed on the internet.