Review 2 of 2
Price Paid:
$550.00 Summary:
The F700 is a very nice camera. I wanted a digital camera with good resolution and optics, and something small enough and quick enough to grab at a moment's notice for spontaneous photography. I bought the case, and the camera stays on my belt all day, ready for use. The shadow detail is better than most other digital cameras I've used, and a bit more detail in bright areas. Easy to use as a snapshot camera, does a tolerable job in the default auto mode. If you have time to set up a shot, the various program modes, aperture prefered or shutter prefered, manual focus, exposure tweaking, white balance adjustments, and lots of other things you can't do with a film camera are there, if you can remember how to get to them in time. Coming from a background with SLRs, being used to a bright optical viewfinder with a microprism focusing, the hardest thing to get used to are the viewfinders; the LCD screen is not big, the optical viewfinder has parallax and is small and only usable with the right eye. This is a complaint in general, not directed to the f700 which isn't any worse and may be better than most in this regard. I download into the iMac using iPhoto, and it is painless. Never needed any of the software Fuji supplied.
I paid $550, and a few days after ordering I was seeing the camera elsewhere for about $500. I bought the leather case (simple, adequate, attractive), a 512MB xD picture card for $166, and a spare NP40 battery for $35 (but now I'm seeing the batteries even cheaper). On a trip, I will probably take all the pictures I want on one xD card, so I won't have to download to a laptop or anything like that, and maybe I'll get another xD card just in case. Strengths:
Excellent quality of images, especially considering the small size and small lens.
Fast start up, fast autofocus.
Accepts tiny 512MB xD picture cards, so you can take about 1200 photos at 1MP resolution.
Blue fringing is much reduced compared to other digital cameras I've tried.
Construction is beautiful and well engineered.
Pictures in chrome mode are very film-like.
Underwater housing is available for $200... a temptation.
This camera is faster and takes better pictures than big bulky Dimage cameras of a year ago; I think if image quality in a conveniently small camera is a primary concern, this is the right camera. Weaknesses:
I wish they had the option to take pictures at even lower resolution of 640 x 480, for those little quickie shots to email (the lowest possible resolution is 1280 x960). I wish you could pick between jpeg resolutions. I wish the tripod hole was centered. I wish the viewfinder had paralax markings. I wish I could see some exposure info in the optical viewfinder, for times when outside in the sun and the viewfinder is unreadable. I wish the manual focusing was a bit more intuitive.
I wish the "cradle" had an extra slot for a spare battery, so you could charge the one in the camera and the extra at the same time.
The instruction manual is adequate, but could be organized a little better, with more help in explaining why you would use some of the many features; I think the potential of the camera would be more obvious with better writing. I wish they would also include a mini version to travel with, with the essentials boiled down. Customer Service:
I had a lot of trouble asking a simple question from Fuji. Their website said the f700 would take xD picture cards up to 256 MB. However, they were selling 512 MB cards. The websited nowhere says that the f700 will take the 512mb card. I had to make a dozen phone calls to Fuji, kept getting transferred back to sales or to the wrong people every time, or to voice mail boxes. Eventually I did get satisfactory answers with a call back and an email. The phone menu system is flawed and tedious, however once you get to the right person, they are helpful. Help is there, getting to it is irritating, but by far not the worst experience I've had.
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