I had the next one down from this, the 825, as a Christmas present last year…

Within a month I’d had to swap it for a Canon 720IS, which has proved to simply be a superior machine, and just as easy to use. Slightly chunkier, yes, but worth an insignificant increase in pocket bulge. It’s no bigger than a typical 35mm point-and-shoot of 10 years ago.

Problems with these Fuji models… well, the interface is just fine. Nice and quick and snappy. Unless you want to set any “manual” settings, whereupon you find it’s basically a slightly more capable version of Program mode on an honestly labelled camera. I can’t even remember if you could set shutter priority – if you could, it was pretty limited (max of 8 seconds? 5? completely useless for shooting flashless at night anyway… not something a noob would have much use for i guess, but it’s nice to be able to experiment).

Most of the differenct scene modes seemed to do the same thing as each other. Not sure what that’s about.

Very limited picture size/compression options, only a single level of compression for most of the limited range of resolutions, or a choice between “normal” (basic-to-normal for most other cameras, i think) or “fine” (only the merest smidge over normal on everything else… still disappointing in terms of fine detail) on the highest res setting. Completely unsuitable for those who don’t like jpg artefacts, though it does have the camera-selling false benefit of offering more shots per memory card at the same rez as one that can do a decent low-compression mode (including at lower resolutions if you’re after removing some of the sensor noise but keeping the chunkier pixels undistorted).

Horrendous sensor noise and lots of oversmoothing to compensate. I know the film grain look is “in”, but it seemed to go straight for the ISO jugular in a lot of cases without recommending/enabling flash or increasing exposure time. And as it goes through 400 to ISO 800 and beyond, with 8mpx and a tiny sensor, a lot of noise results. Which it then smooths (at pretty much ALL ISOs as far as i can tell), leaving an image like an oil painting when you try to zoom into it and an effective resolution probably closer to 4mpx if not 2mpx – why not just recco reducing it in the first place?

The underlying problem linking some of these issues is a lack of optical image stabilisation. What it’s “image stabiliser” mode seems to do is lock the exposure time to a maximum of 1/15s, then bump up the ISO to suit the detect light level. That’s it. There may be a little more electronic trickery behind the scenes to slightly improve it further, but I doubt it – I managed a few “stabilised” pictures in reasonably well lit midnight rooms that were both super grainy AND had terrible shake/motion blur.

Don’t even get me started on movie mode.

I do, however, miss the ability to tweak the screen brightness. The zoom is pretty good, battery life is respectable too. And it does look nice.

I’m not sure of this thing’s market placing. It’d be a decent starter camera, but it seems to want to place itself as more of that, with supposedly advanced features (that it just doesn’t have – my previous died-of-old-age 5mpx Samsung was more capable except for not having the false super-sensitivity) and a huge pixel count, and a bit of a raised price. Schizoid ambitions but only one reality. If you find it really cheap somewhere – or better yet, one of the 5~8 mpx predecessors for even less – and you only ever want a full-auto point and shooter that you’ll set & forget on “maximum quality”, then go right ahead. Otherwise I’d suggest looking at *anything* else first, particularly anything with real OIS.