Fuji FinePix S9500 Review

Good Points
High resolution images
Lots of functions
Great zoom lens

Bad Points
Autofocus can be a bit iffy
Purple fringing on high contrast backlit images

General Comments
You can buy a Fuji FinePix S9500 digital camera from many places on the internet. The cheapest I found was from Savastore at £312.13 including P&P.

Having had issues with Savastore, I opted for Ebuyer.com at £312.47 with free delivery. It is worth the extra 34p for peace of mind when dealing with a known and trusted company.



In the box:



4 x AA Alkaline batteries (lasted less than 1 day)

16 Mb XD picture card (holds only 3 photos in 9Mb Fine mode)

Neck strap with FinePix logo

Lens cap with attached nylon cord 6"

Lens cap clip to prevent the lens cap from swinging loose

Lens hood

A/V cable to view video and images on a TV (PAL or NTSC)

USB cable (high speed USB2)

CD with drivers and image software

Owners manual 143 pages

Quick start guide

And of course the FinePix S9500 camera



First impressions:



Looks and feels like a modern Digital SLR

Heavy enough to be stable when hand held

Feels a bit plasticy, except for the rubberised finger grip and zoom ring

More knobs and buttons than a very knobby buttony thing



The Manual:



It covers all the functions of the camera quite well. It is obvious that it was translated, but if you allow for that you can grasp the meaning with a little thought and by playing with the camera. I found the part about custom white balance setting particularly difficult to follow.



The Batteries:



It takes 4 AA batteries. I recommend getting a set or two of 2500mAh rechargeables, because the supplied Alkaline batteries lasted less than a day.

Batteries are very quick and easy to fit in a compartment on the base of the camera.



Picture Cards:



The S9500 takes either XD, Compact Flash or Microdrive picture cards.

The manual seems to imply you can only use XD OR CF, but I tried putting one 500Mb XD, and one 500Mb CF card in at the same time, and it works fine. You just need to set the media type using the setup menu to switch from one to the other.

If I did not already own XD cards, I would have opted for CF cards only, as they seem to be available cheaper than XD.



Turning it on:



A switch on the front right side of the camera is used to put the camera into OFF, Playback or Photography mode.

One minor niggle here is you have to go via Playback mode to get to Photography mode. It would have been better to have a separate ON/OFF switch.



The controls:



The left of the camera has a rubber flap covering connector sockets for USB, AV and DC power.

Also, there is:

A MACRO button - toggles between normal, macro and super macro modes.

An auto/manual focus selector switch.

An INFO button which displays a graph over the current view in either playback or photo mode. The graph shows the highlight/shadow distribution within the image. Apparently a nice smooth graph which rises in the middle indicates a correctly exposed image.

A button to release the flashgun to its operational position.



The lens barrel simply has a rubberised zoom ring and a manual focus ring. Although the camera's lens is quoted as being 28-300mm focal length, it is in fact 6.4-66mm focal length - (28-300mm is the equivalent on a standard 35mm camera). The lens has a 58mm thread mount for standard filters, and the plastic lens hood has a bayonet mount.



On the top right of the camera at the front is the shutter release button, which has a screw thread for a manual cable release, so you don't need to fork out for an electronic one.



Behind the shutter release / ON button there are three small buttons for flash options, exposure options and shot options.



Behind these three buttons is the option control wheel and the main function select wheel.



The option control wheel is used in conjunction with the three buttons to set the various flash, exposure and shot options when taking photos.



The main function select wheel has:

AUTO - which allows the camera to set shutter speed and aperture automatically.

P - Program mode which allows the user to alter the Aperture/Shutter combinations while maintaining correct exposure.

S - Shutter priority allows selection of shutter speeds between 1/4 second and 1/4000 second.

A - Aperture priority allows the aperture to be set between f2.8 and f11 - (seems there's only up to f8 in full auto).

M - manual setting of shutter between 30 seconds and 1/4000 second, and aperture between f2.8 to f11.

Video (camera symbol) - allows video to be taken at 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 resolution, at 30 frames per second.

Night setting (moon and star symbol) - lets the camera decide on settings most appropriate for night shots.

Landscape (mountain symbol) - lets the camera decide on settings most appropriate for landscape shots.

Portrait (head symbol) - lets the camera decide on settings most appropriate for portrait shots.

Normal light (N) - lets the camera decide on settings most appropriate for everyday sunlit shots.

Anti shake (shaking man symbol) - lets the camera decide on settings which will tend to reduce camera shake. ie. high shutter speeds and ISO settings.



On the back, the camera has:

The media slot cover - behind which is the XD and CF slot.

Menu and joypad control.

F button to allow the setting of picture resolution, ISO (80 to 1600), and Color (Normal, Chrome or B&W).

The Electronic Viewfinder - with dipoter correction wheel.

LCD viewer. The EVF is like the eyepiece on any camera, except it shows a small LCD screen. This means you can't frame a shot without having the camera turned on. The LCD screen is about 1.75" x 1.25" and gives the same info as the EVF. The LCD is more suited to indoors use, as it can be difficult to see in bright light, but it can be tilted up or down to allow viewing from above or below. The dipoter control wheel is for us folk with poor eyesight, and it allows adjustment of the EFV so it can be seen sharply. The only thing is it is too close to the eyepiece, causing you to move your eye away when you use it.

Exposure locking knob and selector dial.

EVF/LCD toggle switch to change between the two options.

Focus checker button which magnifies part of the screen so you can more accurately set the focus.



Sports mode:



There is no sports mode. The manual indicates that to take photos of say a car moving quickly, you would need to focus on a point where you expect the car to be, lock focus on that point, then pan the camera until the car is at the focus point and use high shutter speed.



Personally, I prefer complete manual control (except auto focus - that is useful), instead of all the program options. The program options are very good and will usually give you a great photo, but you can't beat a bit of knowledge and manual settings.



Flash:



The in-buit flash is released with a button on the side of the eyepiece housing. Unlike most in-built flashes, this one is a good 3" from the centre line of the lens, and so it will reduce the likelyhood of red eye.

There are a number of flash options with internal eg. - red eye preflash - full auto - slow synch - fill in.

You can also set the camera to use external flash within the menu system - external hotshoe and socket are non-functional until you do this. Use of external flash requires knowledge of guide numbers, ISO and distance combinations, but this is always supplied with flashguns.



The pictures:



With my 1Gb of combined memory, I can take 220 shots on the best resolution (RAW mode is available as an option in the menu system, but it would reduce my number of pictures to around 50).



I will probably only ever use the 9F mode, which is the highest without going to RAW because you can always reduce the quality later, but you can't increase it, and 220 is enough pictures for me in one go.



When I got the camera set up and had managed to force myself to read a little bit of the manual, I was out there in the field behind the house doing some shots on full auto.



I found that the autofocus was sometimes a bit unsure when the lens was at its longest zoom setting, but this would probably be cured if manual focus was used (the default is the autofocus setting, where the camera is allowed to pick which parts of the image it should attempt to focus on. It can't always do this).



I tried long shots, macro close ups, and just about everything in between.



The images are recorded to the memory card fairly quickly after shooting, and an orange light flashes on the back until writing has completed. The image files contain all the information about the picture size and all the camera / lens settings, as well as the date and time to the second. This is called the EXIF info, which is viewable using most modern photo manipulation software, as well as the FinePix viewer software supplied.



You can also take video (AVI format), but my 1Gb would only give me about 10 minutes at the best resolution. Still, this is a nice to have feature for small clips. There is a slight problem with the video, ie. the microphone is close to the motor for the autofocus, so you get squeeks, beeps and whirrs over the sound of your video as the autofocus constantly tries to update.



To get the pictures/videos onto a PC, you can take out the cards and put them into a reader or use the USB cable and software provided. The FinePix viewer is a fairly simple album management program which starts up automatically when you plug in the USB cable. There is also a piece of software which is supposed to be for use with the video clips, as it came up with messages saying a key had to be purchased before use, so it was immediately deleted.



The file size of pictures taken in 9F mode is around 4.5Mb, which is pretty big.

The image quality, with one or two exceptions, is extremely good indeed. The exceptions being when I was trying to photograph grass at a distance on full zoom - the camera couldn't do it. To be fair, the manual does say that in some circumstances, like shiny surfaces or low contrast images, focus can be impossible using the auto setting.



I have rated the battery life at 10, but this only applies to high power rechargeable batteries. The rating for alkaline batteries would be a 2.



On the whole, it is a very capable prosumer camera, giving excellent photos under most conditions.



Some exceptions are:

Autofocus at long zoom - can be a bit iffy

Backlit high contrast subjects, eg. trees against bright sky - purple fringeing.