Fujifilm FinePix F601 Zoom

My third digital camera, and my third Fuji at that (some might say I'm spoilt). I was quite lucky to acquire this, due to the fact that the Fuji 6800 I had previously developed a fault, requiring the whole main board to be replaced, at a cost too hidious to imagine. After much negotiation, several months of emails, and much pleading with Jessops, and them with Fuji, they finally agreed to let me have a replacement, even though it was a year passed ...
...their way to make sure I was happy.

Apart from the fact that it came in a "refurbished" box, it looked brand spanking new, and it costs around the £300 mark - half what the 6800 cost, but featurewise it's a similar camera.

So this is what you should get in your box :

Fuji Finepix 601 Camera
16Mb Smartmedia Card
Power Supply
NP-60 L-ion Battery
Docking Station ... more

My third digital camera, and my third Fuji at that (some might say I'm spoilt). I was quite lucky to acquire this, due to the fact that the Fuji 6800 I had previously developed a fault, requiring the whole main board to be replaced, at a cost too hidious to imagine. After much negotiation, several months of emails, and much pleading with Jessops, and them with Fuji, they finally agreed to let me have a replacement, even though it was a year passed it's warranty expiration. I'd say they really went out of their way to make sure I was happy.

Apart from the fact that it came in a "refurbished" box, it looked brand spanking new, and it costs around the £300 mark - half what the 6800 cost, but featurewise it's a similar camera.

So this is what you should get in your box :

Fuji Finepix 601 Camera
16Mb Smartmedia Card
Power Supply
NP-60 L-ion Battery
Docking Station / Charger
Case & Strap
USB Cable for conenction to PC
Audio/Video Cable (for connection to TV/Video with suitable phono inputs)
CD containing all software and drivers
134 page instruction Book (all English) and 108 page Software & Quick Setup Guide

First impressions were that it was smaller, not much but a few mm here and there, different enough to have a new case anyway. The overall look and feel is very similar, shiny aluminium, and well built. The screen is smaller, just 1.5 inches, and there are less buttons, a different menu system, all a bit more fiddly perhaps, but none-the-less a nice looking camera.

Taking a photo is straight forward enough, turn it on, put it into auto mode, half press the shutter button to lock focus, then right down to take the photo. The captured image is dispayed on the screen, along with various data such as shutter and aperture information. This can be adjusted so that it automatically saves it, or waits for you to confirm it. If you don't want it, you don't have to keep it. The number of remaining shots are displayed on the screen.

There are a huge number of features on this camera, it's an improvement on the 6800, as it allows manual control of aperture and shutter speed, in addition to a whole host of other settings, that's if you are confident with an SLR.

PICTURE QUALITY & SIZE
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Resolutions of 2832 x 2188 providing a 6.03 megapixel output file. It's not truly 6megapixels, as with the Fuji 6800 it uses a method of immitating it though. A 6mp image will be 2Mb or greater in size, using least compression, depending on the subject you are capturing. The 3megapixel gives a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels, 1 Megapixel is 1280 x 960 and VGA is 640 x 480. Using the supplied 16Mb card would only allow 6 photos in the highest mode, purchase a 128Mb smartmedia card, which will give you an acceptable number of photos, around 53 with least compression, or 113 with normal compression. At the other end of the scale, you can take around 1000 photos on the VGA setting, but these are not really printable quality, but still useful for web sites and emailing quick snaps to friends.

POWER
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The battery with this camera is the NP60, it's super slim, just 7mm (0.28inches), looks moer like a storage device than a battery. In general use, I'd say the battery will last a whole days's shooting, about 150 shots or so, using a combination of screen, flash, zoom and playback, this seems quite reasonable. Replacement batteries can be had for between £15-£25, depending on the make and where you get it. As with the 6800, battery charge time is a maximum of 5 hours, using the supplied docking station, and it's a simple matter of dropping the camera into the cradle, and charging starts. The battery can be topped up at any time, the charge time will be less obviously. You can also use the camera direct from the supplied PSU, this is more useful for playback, or downloading images to the PC.

MENU SYSTEM
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Completely different to the 6800, the menu system on this camera seems quite complicated at first. Pressing the menu button will display a selection of 8 icons, in a circle, the ones selectable will depend on which mode you are currently in. To move around the menus, you must use a very small button which goes left, right, up down and hitting the centre is a confirmation. Selecting one of the icons on the main menu will generally bring you to a list of options available for that setting, ie selecting the Flash icon will present you with four options, however you cannot select the flash icon without first popping up the flash unit. Once you get used to the menu system, you can move around it quite quickly, but it does require the occasional glance at the user manual.

ZOOM
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I'd have liked to have seen Fuji extend the Zoom on this camera, it only provides 3x Optical, as well as the digital zoom, which I never seem to want to use. Zoom in movie mode (more about that later) can only be used before recording begins, seems strange.

FLASH
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4 flash settings are provided. Auto - where the camera chooses the best available flash settings. Red-eye reduction - fires a pre-flash before the main one to reduce the red eye effect, seems to work very well in most situations. Forced Flash - to photograph scenes which are back-lit, such as someone standing by a window perhaps. Slow Synchro - for night photography where you want to have both foreground and background well lit. I've found the slow syncro mode is also useful for closeups in badly lit areas such as the floor of a forest. You have to pop up the flash manually, the camera won't do it for you not even in the darkest situation. The flash brightness can also be changed in manual mode. The effective range of the flash is typical for this type of camera, up to around 4metres.

MACRO
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The macro function is accessable through the menu system, rather than a dedicated button on the 6800. As this is a feature I use a lot, it's quite annoying to have to enter the menu each time I turn on the camera to use it, but you get used to it after a while. The effective distance is between 20-80cm, so not the closest macro on the market, but close enough to get some nice detailed shots of insects and flowers, amongst other things.

PLAYBACK/ERASING PHOTOS ETC
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They've taken away the slideshow option present on the 6800, but the rest of playback options are pretty similar. You can forward and rewind through them one at a time, fast forward with 3 images on screen at once, or preview 9 images at a time. With the last option, you can select the image you want to view easily. You can zoom in (up to 18x), pan around the image, and crop (trim). You can save a cropped image as a different image, although not realyl necessary as this can also be done using the PC. Deleting a photo is easy, as is deleting all the photos on the memory card. A format option is also provided should the card become corrupt - this has never happened with me so far however.

MANUAL CONTROL
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As mentioned earlier, a big improvement over the 6800 is the ability to set your own aperture, shutter speed, or both. In fact there are 4 options available, depending on your skill level.

(M) Allows you to set any shutter speed (2 to 1/1600sec) or aperture F2.8 to F8) setting.

(S) Allows you to set the shutter speed, and the camera will choose the best aperture. Choosing a fast shutter speed allows you to freeze action, whereas a slow speed is useful in lower light situations.

(A) Allows you to set the aperture, and the camera selects the shutter speed. A wide aperture will allow you to take shots with a blur background effect, and a narrow aperture will ensure both foreground and background are in perfect focus.

(P) In this mode, the camera takes care of the shutter and aperture, but still allows you to make other adjustments to the settings.

Manual focussing can also be carried out, for subjects which the auto focus has trouble focussing on, or for when you intentially want to take an out of focus shot, for some particular artistic effect.

VIDEO & SOUND
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Perhaps a useful feature is the ability to add voice captions to a particular picture, of up to 30 seconds. In this mode, first take a shot, then the voice record screen is shown, pressing the OK button will allow you to start speaking, pressing it again will stop recording. You can also record memos of up to 4.5hours on a 128Mb Smartmedia card, which can include index marks to allow you to jump to certain places in a conversation for instance (much like video indexing). Digital videos can be recorded and played back with a resolution of up to 640x480, fairly respectable quality for a camera of this size and cost. It records both sound and video at 15 frames per second. This camera can also be used as a webcam, allowing you to chat and see you friends at the time.

MORE FUNCTIONS
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Continuous shooting. In this mode you can take up to 4 shots at once, with .2 second intervals. This is great for action, fast moving children etc, although you cannot use flash. Once taken, the images appear on screen, and you can record which ones you want. The auto bracketing is similar, in that it records multiple shots, but at 3 different exposures, which is configurable. A new feature also allows you to fire off up to 40 shots (yes 40!), however this can only be done in 1mp mode, which is a shame.

Frame protection. If you have taken that amazing photograph and really want to make sure don't erase it accidentally (it can be done), use this option. You can apply protection to single frames or all of them on the memory card. To delete these, you must first remove the protection.

ISO Sensitivity. Simulates the film setting on a 35mm camera. Choices are 160,200 or 400, 800 or 1600 ISO. The higher the number, the more useful it is for lower light. The 800 and 1600 settings can only be used in 1mp mode. Higher settings do tend to produce more noise though, so some experimentation between sensitivity and longer shutter speeds is a must to obtain quality images.

Self timer. Put your camera on a tripod, or balance it carefully somewhere stable, line up your shot, press the shutter, then get yourself in picture. 10 Seconds later you should have a nice photo with yourself in it. The self timer can also be useful when you are photographing still objects closeup, on a tripod, avoiding any contact with the shutter on longer exposures will mean a sharper image.

Night scene. Slows the shutter to as little as 3 seconds when taking night or low light scenes, so best to be used on a tripod. Can be used with slow syncro flash to brighten background.

Sports mode. For taking photos using a fast shutter speed, allowing you to freeze people in mid air for instance. Flash can also be used in this mode.

Portrait and Landscape Modes. These modes provide optimal settings for the best portrait or landscape shots.

There are other more technical options available, but I shan't go into those, as for most people, you simply won't use them.

SOFTWARE & CONNECTION
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You are provided with all you need to send your photographs to your PC, view and manipulate them. None of it seems too complicated. As well as the image viewing software, webcam and video software is also provided. Some interesting options such as producing a storyboard with captions are also possible. Connection is easy via the USB, or a cardreader, transfer time depends on the number of images you have stored on the card, but it's reasonably quick and easy.

CONCLUSION
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The main point of a camera is to get perfect shots, and this camera really produces some wonderful ones. The colours are vibrant, very true to the original subjects, and produce some stunning prints.

It's by all means not a professional camera (no external flash option for instance), you should look at other models if you want to do some ultra serious photography, but for most of us, even semi professional, it provides most of the functionality and quality you need. It's a little complex to begin with, although it doesn't have to be, and if you simply don't understand a lot of the functions, you don't need to use them all. The manual is a very useful guide to the camera, and you'll find yourself referring to it in the early days of use.

I've actually given this camera to Lucky_Cow now, as I've inherited another 5Megapixel camera from my very kind mum!
 

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