Film cameras always drove me nuts with the lack of zoom ability. SLRs with zoom attachments are ok, but take too much time to change and are just too bulky. Point and shoot cameras with a 200mm zoom or whatever isn't very far, especially for outdoors.

So I set out to find a good $300-400 digital camera with at least a 6x zoom. If at this point you don't know the difference between digital and optical zoom, you should, since it is one of this camera's strong points. Digital zoom is crap, and isn't useful at all if you plan on any digital editing, cropping, etc. since you can zoom with almost any software, and with better control. The quality of the 6x Optical zoom here is very good. Some other cameras I looked at have a 10x zoom, but the image quality wasn't as good.

I have a friend with a Fujifilm 2600 and this is quite a bit better for not much more money. It has a 20 second movie mode whereas the 2800 has 60 (will elaborate in a second), only a 2x zoom (I think), and a slightly different viewfinder and LCD screen. It's smaller and has a slide over the lens, which is more convenient than the detachable SLR-style the 2800 has. It needs that because the lens comes out an inch or two when you're zooming, so a slide cover wouldn't really do the trick. Not a huge deal.

Nor is the battery life a big deal. I'm using NiMH (maybe $30 for charger and 4 AA batteries), but regular alkalines work fine. I face it that batteries really suck and need to replaced often with everything except a clock or a TV remote. If you're going to sit around and use this for an online camera (haven't used this feature, but it's cool to have and not found in all cameras), you may want to get an AC adapter, but it's $30 and seems way overpriced to me.

Ok, the movie mode. This is cool as hell. You can take up to a 60-second movie (.avi format, but you can convert it to .mov or .mpeg or whatever with the software), similar to a camcorder. I think it's 10 frames/second, which is a bit jittery (film is 24 frames/sec for your info, but I really like it. It's that small size video when you play it on your computer, but that's better for the quality is has. My brother has a digital Camcorder and has a still pic mode, but it's like 640x480 resolution or some nonsense. I prefer this way (2 megapixel, but less than stellar video quality). No zoom when you do video. You can edit it with the included sorta basic software, and email it around. Cool stuff. You can store quite a few of these on a memory card. I have a 128 meg one and never run out. More on that in a sec. There also is a continuous mode 4 picture thing, and I've used that to capture some action pictures that I wouldn't have been able to capture otherwise.

The manual controls on this are pretty good, but you have to scroll through menus to get to them, which takes time. I leave most of them on auto, but there are exposure and white balance settings, etc. that give you some flexibility.

Another camera I've seen (jumping around here) is a Kodak 2 megapixel of similar price ($330 or so). It had about the same features as the Fuji 2600 above (size of a pack of cigarettes, sliding cover, 2x zoom), but weighed a ton. I know it's cool you can put it in your shirt pocket (you can't do this with the 2800, it's too fat- maybe 2x the size of the others), but what was Kodak thinking? It has to weigh 3x what the Fuji ones do. It comes with rechargeables, so they make up for it there.

SmartMedia is what this uses- it's fine, but is very small (about 1.5" x 1.75", thin as a penny). Compactflash is bigger, but SmartMedia is all this has, and it's ok. 128Mb at the highest quality setting gives you maybe 150 pictures (can't remember), and many more at lower resolutions, so that's pretty good. This camera comes with 16Mb, so buy another. Don't get less than 64Mb (maybe $27). I have a 128Mb and the original 16Mb and would consider myself covered on everything except a vacation, where I'd get another 128.

I've used local drugstore and mailorder "pictures on disk" and internet companies for film digital processing, but this is better. The internet pictures you download aren't great quality, and the scans generally aren't that good (that's what they do, scan the developed film). I've done it at home, but that's a pain.

That's it. Hope this helps.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 330