Fujifilm FinePix S304 > Reviews (14)

I have had this camera for around 2 years now, I bought it when it first hit the market and at the time it was the best available for its relatively small price.

I went looking for a decent quality camera because I was fed up of not being able to take the pictures I wanted to, I had no real knowledge of photography but an eye for a good photo and every camera I have ever owned has restricted me to taking the type of shot that IT wants to, so I went out with a reasonable budget and looked at all of the top range of new (at the time) digital cameras.

I found that for £50 I could buy a camera that claims it can do anything - and I mean everything! The manufacturers seem to spend a lot of time hiding behind numbers and after you dig a little you find it's fit for the needs only of a five year old. Similarly you could spend in the region of £1500 on the new, all singing, all dancing digital camera for the paperazzi - but never be able to figure out how to use it.

So what do you do? Well after hours of trawling the net I came ocross this little beauty. Unlike it's competition in the £300 - £400 market everything it claimed it could do was substantiated, good quality 3.2M pics, a monsterous 6x optical zoom, a further 4x digital zoom, macro, low light modes (tripod needed really for these), oh yeah - tripod fittings, movie mode and even doubles as a webcam and at £350 - around £100 cheaper than any other similar spec'd camera. Must be a catch?

Well, acually there was. It used Fuji's very own type of XD memory card, I think it's first outing, availability was still limited meaning prices for larger cards were high. It also meant that none of the reader manufacturers trusted it either and even Fuji themselves hadn't yet released an external reader for it! Hmmm... Predicament!

I took a chance and I bought it and with baited breath waited for the technology to be proved to the market and the extras to become available. Sure enough they did and it seems it's now a growing trend, I bought an Olympus the other day for a gift and it too was sporting the Fuji XD card - result!

The camera itself is good, good looks, good ergonomics, decent size screen and menu system to go with it so you can easily look through and edit your images. The stills it takes are out of this world, at todays standards the 3.2m is pretty meagre but the 6 - 36mm lens and razor sharp auto-focus make up for it so you get a good quality picture of a landmark instead of getting a good quality picture of the whole street with the landmark in the middle of a whole load of wasted pixles.

It does have a few downsides, when you want to take stills without the flash the auto-focus can be a bit awkward if the light isn't fantastic so it sometimes takes a little playing with to get it locked into your subject. Oh and this thing eats AA bateries for breakfast so if you are planning to use it a lot without a power adaptor I would suggest getting shares in Duracell. Also the webcam option on it isn't particularly good but then again why would you want a £350 webcam.

On the whole a cracking buy and I would recommend it but please be aware that I bought this camera some time ago and things do change a lot.

I hope this helps

Tony

# PS: I was going to add a pic to give you an idea of quality but it won't let me because my status is still white but if you want a pic sent just ask