Fuji FinePix S304 Zoom Digital Camera [3.2MP 6xOptical]

The scenes settings that the camera comes with all work very well and are definitely helpful for the less experienced photographer. The manual settings, although fairly limited, include white balance, flash adujustment, lighting adjustment, and three aperture settings, which again for a less experienced photographer are more than enough. And of course the automatic settings work just fine too.

Mostly, I would just like to put people's minds at ease for the two major gripes with this camera. The first is low light photography. The flash does work fine in low light and if adjustments are made to the settings you can take reasonable shots indoors. Also, there is a night scene setting that slows the shutter speed down to 3 seconds. You have to use a tripod to get that perfect shot but this setting definitely takes very good night shots. The second issue is with the loose fitting lens cap. This really is an issue as the lens needs to be taken care of. I sent an email to Fuji Film and they replied straight back saying they were aware of the fault, asked for my address, and popped a new lens cap in the post for me that night.

Brilliant customer service. So good in fact that I promised I would write this review! So, if you're looking for a mid-range digital camera with a decent zoom to rival any SLR buy this, grab a 128Mb memory card and an AA battery charger, and you'll taking great pics in no time flat and won't regret it. I sure haven't.

About the camera itself. The picture quality is the best I've seen on a digital camera and it really is easy to use. It has enough SLR type functions to excite those people who want to feel like they've actually contributed to the picture aside from just pressing the button but if you want to point and shoot that's no problem either. The only thing to mention is that the camera picks up on body shake and warns you prior to capturing the image, I guess this is a good thing as it ensures the picture is at it's best, it is however a bit tricky to totally eliminate shake without the use of a tripod.

I would definitely recommend buying a bigger memory card for extra space. I got a 128Mb card and this will fit just short of 200 pics at 3M pixels. All in all, I would say this is well worth the money and this would appear to be the best deal around.

A 3.2MP CCD chip may not be the best quality in the world, but it is certainly more than adequate, especially with todays home photo inkjet printers. The manual function gives you control of the white balance and the aperture, the camera works out the shutter speed, but it would have been nice to incorporate manual focus, as it does have a slight problem focussing in the dark or on dark objects, hence four stars. However the lens adaptor allows standard 55mm diameter filters to be applied, so you get yet another degree of professionalism. I have purchased a UV skylight filter to protect the lens and a Circluar Polarising filter, these two work fantastically with this camera. There is also an option to buy a telphoto adaptor which expands the optical zoom by 1.5x, and also a wide angle adaptor. Excellent!

The set up menu is very easy to use and the flash is nicely hidden away when not in use. Which incidentally is stupendously powerful, and you can adjust the brightness. The camera has a distinct SLR look to it and also is very easy to hold steady. The tiny LCD monitor inside the viewfinder means that you can see what you are doing without wasting valuable battery time, and also means that this truly is by definition a "Digital SLR" as you can see what the lens sees in the viewfinder.

I could go on forever about the XD cards too. They are SO FAST! downloads to my PC are almost instant, video playback is crisp and smooth, and the camera's writing speed is phenominal.

On the whole.....well worth the money. BUY IT NOW!!!