Fuji FinePix S9500 Review

Good Points
9Mp gives A3 pictures or allows for lots of cropping
HUGE zoom lens of 10.7:1
The complete look and feel of a good digital SLR
Big, pop-out screen AND digital colour viewfinder with one-press switching
Good on-board flash
Very fast actions: start-up, focus, recovery, transfer
Takes the pro-standard and inexpensive CompactFlash cards and micro-drive
Uses 4 AA batteries, so easy to get emergency power from the nearest shop or market anywhere in the world and make use of cheap NiMh rechargeables, not brand-specific and expensive lithium batteries
Easy-to-use manual focusing, with lens ring and magnifier in the viewfinder
Has a battery restorer function - it works to get rid of the 'memory effect' that plagues all NiCd and NiMh cells eventually, so it restores ANY NiMh AA cells to full charge capacity again and again

Bad Points
Weight and size - in common with all SLR's
Can't change lenses; the minimum focal length is 6.3mm (that's 28mm in 35mm equivalent)
Remote flash shoe not dedicated, so rather basic functions when the on-board flash won't do
Uses Xd cards, now outclassed and special to two brands of camera. So ignore this option and use the CF cards instead

General Comments
Anticipating my SLR move to digital, I tried out several models and read the reviews in magazines and online. Everything left me dissatisfied. Either cameras were at silly prices, making the total cost of ownership over 5 years far more than sticking to film and scanning prints and negs, or resolution was too low, so that I couldn't get decent enlargements. All except the priciest cameras had one or more real drawbacks too. Typically they felt 'wrong' to handle, or used poor cards, or were slow to start up and focus, or something else gave me that nag that means you won't ever be comfortable using this camera.



Then the Canon EOS350D came along. I'm still using film SLR's: a Canon EOS30E (that wonderful eye-control focusing!) and my old EOS650 (tough and intuitive to use); the 350D compares quite well with both in use, and works quickly and has a useful resolution, but it was TOO small and light, hard to grip and lacking stability. I felt more comfortable using my old cameras or a super compact digital; the kind that slips into a breast pocket. Overall, I reasoned in October 2005, that it was not quite time to make the changeover yet.



So I decided to get the well-reviewed Fuji S7000 to do digital work as a stop-gap, despite several serious flaws that the reviewers cover well.



Then the S9500 came out, and so - with an upcoming trip including California, Las Vegas and a once-in-a-lifetime Grand Canyon visit with both plane and helicopter trips, I bought one.



At the 9Mp max resolution the two 1GB cards I got were good for 420 shots each, so I could be snap-happy and forget processing costs. No need to lens swap: my big zoom wasn't any better than the S9500's lens. No film changing in the plane either, I thought!



And so it proved - but I could hardly believe the other advantages! Five packs of 2400mAh AA batteries and a multi-voltage charger powered the camera, extra high-power flash, CD player and MP3 player AND my torch! A borrowed laptop downloaded shots safely from the cards to CD, so I could take thousands at no extra cost (I edited back home, binning about two thirds and selecting about 100 for printing, with print charges LESS than with film processing!).



And the camera did all I could ask of it. Once I got used to the button layout and the menus, it was as easy to use as my film cameras, and it performed stunningly in bad light without flash, switched on too fast for me to notice any delay and focused reliably, even in light too low for my film cameras to 'see' to focus - only my dedicated Canon flash with its infra-red light focuses better (and that uses the same AA cells!). I used film only for the few ultra-wide-angle shots I wanted and when I needed that big flash.



So how does it compare with the SLR-Ds I tried? I didn't test any of them to the limit as the professional reviewers did, but I couldn't tell any practical difference between this 9500 and SLR's costing twice as much and with smaller-zooming lenses. No doubt the SLR's were better, particularly in CCD noise and lens quality - that's what you pay the extra for. But even when editing in Photoshop, I couldn't find anything to make me think, "if this had been a 650D/Dynax, etc., I could have..." And that's where it counts.



I won't now buy a digital SLR this year, or next, or probably until we get 24x36mm CCD's at 20Mp and under £500 for the body. And then I expect to buy Canon, just to use those lenses I'm keeping while I use my old film cameras to fill the few gaps this fixed-lens 9500 can't cover. Why aren't I selling them? Have you looked at what non-digital SLR's are now fetching on eBay? I wept!



Meanwhile, I can thoroughly recommend the Fuji S9500 as the perfect compromise between price and usability. It covers almost everything my semi-professional use can invent for it, that a full digital SLR could do. But I do wish it had my Canon EOS30E's eye control focusing!