Fuji Q1

I own an 'old' Olympus Camedia 3040 zoom with which I am very satisfied. However, as a kayaker, I wanted something cheap enough to risk taking out to sea for the occasional interesting shot. I was not looking for perfection and having previously owned a couple of entry level Fujifilm digital cameras, I thought that the Q1 would have the same good lens, colour rendition and lack of distortion as its predecessors. What a disappointment! Despite its 3 megapixels, image quality is poor in all circumstances. Being somewhat wideangle, it is impossible to turn the camera 90 degrees for a 'portrait' format. The result is a highly exaggerated fisheye effect. The lack of an optical viewfinder makes it impossible to shoot accurately outside, especially here in Southern Spain. I have had to attach a 5cm long, 4cm diameter plastic tube to the surround the lcd viewer (using duct tape) and shade it somewhat. This makes the camera rather bulky to carry around. The colour rendition is inferior to that of my previous Fujifilms. The so-called 'macro' reminds me of the slide-on close-up lenses on the old Polaroid 600 cameras, helpful for portraits, but being able to focus at a distance of 60 to 120 cm is certainly not 'macro mode' and should not be advertised as such. And of course, as with any digital camera, one can forget about the digital zoom although one can not expect to have optical zoom on such a low-priced camera.

Having installed a 16MB xd card, I cannot complain about excessive battery usage.

I think Fujifilm has harmed its reputation by putting this camera on the market.

Perhaps I can clarify the comments made by the two other reviewers. Just to confuse us Fuji make a Q1 digital camera and a Q1 APS camera !!

To the reviewer "US guest": I don't understand your review...this is not an APS-camera at all.. it's a digital camera..!

I find the design of the Fuji Q1 appealing, and it is easy to use. I bought it for my 10 yr daughter, and this was a hit.

The only negative to say, is that the control-button is not the best. I addition, the flash should not be used closer than 5 feet. (the faces turns out bright white)