Fujifilm FinePix AX350 / AX355 > Reviews (1)

I wanted a new digital camera for my holiday this year and so went straight onto Amazon to have a browse. I already had a Samsung digital camera but I have had it for quite a few years now and the quality of the photos were no longer as good as I would have liked. Having loved my Samsung camera though I straight away looked at Samsung cameras on Amazon, but they all seemed quite pricey. I would have to pay just over £100 for a decent one, otherwise there would be no point in me even buying a new one and may as well stick to my old one.

I never even considered Fujifilm until I came across one on Play.com, which stuck out to me because of its price, £70.99. As I had some Amazon vouchers I searched for the exact same camera on there, in hope it would be just as cheap, and it was. My old camera was black and this time I wanted a colourful one, preferably purple or red. This Fujifilm AX350 was available in red, pink, black or silver. I found that the colourful cameras always seemed to cost a little more than the exact same model of it in black or silver, and this was the case with many brands of digital cameras. However, with this particular Fujifilm camera, it only cost extra to have it in pink, but in red it was its usual price of £70.99.

I am no techno geek when it comes to digital cameras and only ever look to see how many megapixels it has and what the optical zoom is like. This model is 16MP and 5x optical zoom, but compared to my old 7MP camera I thought this must be good. I asked my boyfriend to look at all the technical details for me and to let me know if it was a good camera, as I thought it seemed pretty cheap after I had been looking at cameras with the same specs from other brands, but costing over £100. I thought there must be something this camera doesn't do that all the others do!

He gave me the OK and said it seemed a good digital camera, and much much better than the one I had at the time, so along with his word and the good reviews that the product already had on Amazon, I bought it. The camera has 4 stars on Amazon and a lot of the reviews were 5 stars.

Here are some of the basic product details and specifications that the camera has...

16 Megapixels
5x Zoom
HD Movie Mode
Panoramic Shooting Mode
Megapixels: 16
16 megapixels with 5x Fujinon optical zoom lens
Single and continuous Auto Focus with SR Auto and movie mode
Panoramic Shooting mode
Full HD photos and 720p HD movie capture (16 : 9 stills)
Face Detection technology with auto red-eye removal

When the camera arrived I tried it out straight away, and straight away I was very impressed and could notice a very big difference in the quality of the photos compared to what I was used to with my old camera.

There are so many shooting modes to use which you can access easily by pressing menu on the camera. My boyfriend liked trying them all out such as night time mode for on a night, me however, just kept it on auto whenever I used it, and the pictures took were always good quality and visible no matter what time of the day it was!

You can also delete photos and arrange them into photo albums on the camera. I like this feature as I have a 2gb SD card which can hold a lot of photos, and so even though I have them saved on my computer, I still like to keep them saved on there and so can view them on my camera if I wish. Instead of having to click through every single photo to get to a particular one, I can just select a certain photo album on the camera and find it from there, which makes it much quicker to find.

One thing about this camera that annoyed me straight away, is the beeping noise it makes every time I press a button. When looking through photos this can get annoying but the noise can be turned off (which took me a while to realise). All you need to do is hold down the button that you use to shoot a photo, until the message pops up on the LCD screen.

The camera came with two AA batteries. After using the camera for a night out before I went away, and half way through the holiday they eventually ran out, although I had taken a lot of videos as well as photos which can use the batteries up a lot quicker. I therefore had to buy some more batteries while I was away. I am not used to having to worry about batteries for my camera as my previous one came with a rechargeable battery which I could just charge up using a plug, or connecting it by USB to my computer. Therefore I will be buying some rechargeable batteries to use with this camera, and will recommend anyone else to do the same if purchasing this camera, as you will only have to keep buying new batteries for it otherwise.

As previously mentioned, this camera takes an SD card. I do know that some camera often have a maximum size on the SD card that your able to use with cameras, however this one doesn't seem to state what the maximum size is. I used my 2GB SD card and this works fine. You will need one with this camera as it has no internal memory. When I was taking a photo without the SD card inside, it would show the photo for a few seconds after it being took, then it would disappear.

The camera doesn't come with a camera case and so this will be my next purchase for it. I have already lightly scratched the LCD screen, the scratch is very small though and the screen itself is 2.7 inches wide, and so it isn't very noticable, but I do want to prevent any further scratches. I ended up carrying this around in my sunglasses case on holiday!

The camera comes with two AA batteries, a wire to connect the camera to your PC, a strap to apply to your camera, manual and warranty booklet, and the Fujifilm Finepix CD to allow you to install the software onto your PC.

After my Amazon vouchers were applied I only ended up paying £28 for this camera, but would recommend it at its price of £70.99 and wouldn't have even minded paying that for it. I have seen this camera available from Amazon and Play.com. It is now even cheaper priced at £65.49 on Amazon.
If you are in need of a camera but are put off by the high prices, then I recommend this. I still can't believe how good it is for the price as I just assumed all cameras around this price mustn't be that good... but I was wrong!