Pros: 9-megapixel, 4X optical zoom, good battery life
Cons: overexposed pictures, picture with lines through them, pop-up flash
The Bottom Line: This camera does have some nice features however the pictures I took turned out overexposed, had lines through them, and many were blurry. I would not recommend purchasing this camera.
eyestar's Full Review: FUJIFILM FinePix E900 Zoom Digital Camera
I went searching for a new digital camera to replace my Canon S30 I had purchased several years ago. My Canon was having some underexposure and shutter lag problems so I was looking for a new camera that would hopefully help with these issues. I was particularly interested in being able to take pictures that were not underexposed and took well in low lighting. I did some extensive research and found myself looking in my MacWorld magazine at digital camera reviews to help me narrow down my selection.
In the June 2006 issue, MacWorld reviewer Richard Baguley, posted a glowing review of the Fujifilm Finepix E900 9MP Digital Camera - giving it a whopping four mice rating (out of five possible), which is very good considering they seem to give very few digital cameras that high of a rating. One if the biggest sellers for me was reading the following stated by Mr. Baguley in the article, “This camera produces very attractive images, with vivid yet accurate colors and exposures in a variety of lighting situations; the camera coped with daylight and studio setups equally well. Images were quite sharp, as well. There was also little evidence of noise at lower ISO settings, although some noise appeared when I bumped the ISO to the maximum of 800.” Besides that, I was also sold on the camera’s Natural Light setting, which the Fuji website states is “for scenes where flash is undesirable or prohibited”. I found many reviews and pictures posted by people that had purchased & used the camera and found that this setting was just what I was looking for because of all my issues with underexposed images I was having with my Canon. I was also impressed by the 4X optical zoom and 9 megapixel setting. I liked as well that it used Ni-MH batteries and two regular double AA batteries could be used in place of the Ni-MH batteries if needed.
I couldn’t find very many bad reviews on the camera. The MacWorld reviewer did state a few minimal cons about the camera including a low-resolution LCD, pop-up flash that could be easily damaged, and a few others but I could live with these. I didn’t find many other negative reviews from users who purchased the camera and found most to be very positive.
On May 18th, 2006, I purchased the camera from bestbuy.com with the 4 year additional protection plan, as I have had problems with digital cameras in the past. I also purchased a 512MB memory card for the camera. I was very excited to receive the camera and couldn’t wait to begin using it. It arrived about a week later.
I quickly took the camera from the box and was very pleased by the look. I liked the black slick case and the camera felt fairly sturdy to me, which hopefully meant it would last a long time. I liked how quickly it turned on when pressing the on button. I immediately took a few pictures with the camera. It seemed to work very well and I was pleased. I found that keeping the camera on a 9MP picture setting however filled the memory card fairly quickly so I lowered the megapixel down to 3, which was suitable for the pictures I wanted to take. I was very impressed by the zoom on the camera as well.
I found the shutter speed to be fairly fast. I would like it to be somewhat faster but it does the job.
One feature I wasn’t so impressed with was the pop-up flash. I did read and know it came with a pop-up flash but I didn’t realize how annoying it would be to actually use. I quickly realized how much I missed the automatic flash on my previous camera. The E900 does tell you when the flash is needed and you hit a button and it pops up, but you manually have to put it back down when you are finished and pop it back up when you need it again. It could be time-consuming having to do this especially if you wanted to take a quick shot of something. The flash also popped-up while in my case and could have easily gotten damaged from this happening.
I did notice right away that all the pictures, even those without using the flash, seemed to be overexposed. I first thought it was just my error and kept taking pictures but noticed almost every picture I took was slightly overexposed. When I did use the flash, I found it gave off A LOT of light - way more light than any other digital camera I had ever used. I actually kind of liked this at first because my last camera did have the underexposed picture problem however I quickly discovered that using the flash left most of the picture very bright, leaning toward white, and all were overexposed. This issue was disappointing but something I was going to try to work around.
I discovered that taking close up pictures using the “tulip button” (as I like to call it) or micro setting did work however my camera would not allow me to zoom in or out when set on the macro setting, which was very disappointing. I take many pictures on this setting and need to zoom in/out on them frequently. One person left me a comment on this review stating "Also, most if not all digital camera/lens point and shoots do not allow zooming in the macro (tulip) mode. This isn't a shortcoming by any means. True macro lenses, even in the SLR world are fixed or "prime" lenses and don't zoom. You are way too close for zooming anyway." I completely dissagree. Both my Canon PowerShot S30 and my mother-in-law's Canon PowerShot S40 allow zooming on the macro setting and I used it constantly! I find this a big shortcoming in this camera and others users may as well.
I found the settings to be somewhat confusing to figure out. I mainly take pictures on Auto mode however so didn’t worry much about it.
One issue I did notice right away was that if you want to turn off the LCD display to save battery life and take pictures through the viewfinder only, you need to keep turning off the LCD every time you turn the camera back on as it does not remember the setting. I found this rather upsetting as I like to take pictures quickly and turn the camera on & off rather frequently.
The LCD screen is fairly small especially considering how large they are on newer digital cameras. This really didn’t bother me much however as I am used to a smaller LCD.
The batteries seem to last quite a long time even using the LCD. I was impressed that I didn’t have to charge them frequently. It does take quite some time (several hours) to charge them so you do want to have a spare around if needed. The camera also has a feature to de-charge the batteries if you are having problems with them, which I found very nice. It does take a long time to do this however - I tried it once and it took several hours.
I found when I put the camera in my case that the knob to change settings would frequently flip to another setting. I usually have it set on auto and found when I took it out of the case it had been set on the natural light or another setting. It’s good thing to check this before taking pictures.
I did have some issues with pictures coming out blurry. With my past Canon, I didn’t have many issues with blurriness however I found that almost every time I used this camera I would get at least 2-3 blurry pictures a time. I found myself taking multiple pictures of each shot in hopes one would turn out without the blur.
After using the camera just a few times I noticed some of the pictures I had taken turned out very poorly. They had a lot of noise and lines running through them. I tried turning the camera back on and off, different locations, different settings, but no matter what I did I still had the same problem. Hoping it was battery failure, I uncharged the batteries and recharged them again which seemed to fix the problem.
The camera worked fine for a few days and then I took the camera to the park to take some pictures of my son. It was a bright & very sunny day and I thought it would a perfect day to use my new camera. I turned the camera on and noticed immediately something was wrong with the LCD display. The LCD was almost completely whited out from the sun. I could hardly see any images through the LCD. In fact it was so bright, it hurt my eyes to look at it. With the previous digital cameras I’ve had in the past I have never had any problems like this before. I figured maybe it was just the sun and tried taking a picture. I snapped a few pictures and they turned our horrible. The pictures looked exactly like the LCD display - they were all whited out & severely overexposed. I tried holding my hand over the camera to block out some of the sunlight to see if that would help but it didn’t. After taking a few more pictures the line problem I was having earlier also returned.
I then went back in the car, out of the sun, and took a few pictures which turned out fine, without the lines. After taking the camera home, I took another shot where the lines appeared in the image again.
I am unsure if my camera is just defective or if other users have had similar issues with this camera. Considering I have owed it for a month and used it very infrequently I am very disappointed over all with the camera. I have decided to exchange it for a different brand altogether. I would not recommend purchasing this camera.
UPDATE: Some people have told me that it must have been my error that the camera is taking overexposed pictures, however I have spoken with a camera expert and followed all her steps in hopes to fix the camera and none of the steps worked. No setting was accidentally changed to cause the pictures to come out overexposed. I used the camera one minute & it worked fine and the next minute the pictures had lines through them and were overexposed and blurry. The camera is defective and I am returning it.
Recommended:
No
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