One User's Opinion of Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom

© 2001 by Foster Coburn. All Rights Reserved.

Review of Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom

One of the fastest changing parts of the computer industry today is in digital cameras. Most of the change is in trying to get more megapixels in the same little box. For those who need high-end photographs, this is a good thing. But the majority of us just don't need all those extra pixels. In fact, they can create problems due to their sheer size. So in deciding which type of cameras I wanted to review, I chose carefully. One intriguing model was the Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom. It captures only 2 megapixels, but it compensates for this by providing a 6x optical zoom instead. For my usage, the zoom is much more interesting than a bunch of extra pixels.

Things started out pretty rough for me with the camera. It was to arrive on a Friday afternoon, but I was also leaving the country that afternoon. So I worked a deal with the delivery driver to get it a bit earlier that day. Once I got to my destination, I installed the software that allowed my computer to get pictures from the camera. This required a reboot and the computer just flat wouldn't do it. After getting everything going again, I believe the installation problem was purely a coincidence of a machine that sees lots of software installed and uninstalled. I was just happy that I could finally give the camera a test.

The FinePix 2800 Zoom is certainly not the smallest digital camera, but it does pack a lot of punch in a small box measuring 3.7 in x 3.0 in x 2.8 in (95 mm x 77 mm x 71 mm). The weight is 13.8 oz (390 grams) when fully loaded with batteries and other accessories. While the camera won't slip into your pants pocket, it would in a large jacket pocket and is very manageable even for a long day of photography.

Supplied with the camera was a single set of 4 AA batteries. For me, they lasted approximately 50 pictures. As I had some others in my party test the camera, it is possible that the batteries could last longer. The manual does say that 200 frames is normal with the LCD turned on. I also have used a set of rechargeable batteries that have lasted for 100 pictures and are still going strong. One nice option is to have the LCD screen turned off when taking pictures to conserve battery life. I will knock the score a little bit for not supplying rechargeable batteries with the camera. Other than that, I found power management to be acceptable.

Also included with the camera was a 16 MB SmartMedia card. I was taking most of my pictures in the 1 megapixel, normal mode. According to the manual, this gives files of approximately 320 KB. And it goes on to say that approximately 49 should fit on a 16 MB card with these settings. I consistently got 22 images before the camera told me the card was full. Something is clearly wrong as it seems to be thinking the card is only 8 MB. For reference, you can take images at 3 sizes; 2 megapixel (1600 x 1200), 1 megapixel (1280 x 960) and VGA (640 x 480). When shooting 2 megapixel images there are three quality settings. One megapixel images only have two quality settings. There is also a mode that takes short movies and I did not test this. All still pictures are saved in JPG format and the only difference in quality is the amount of lossy compression used. It is disappointing that there is no option to save images as TIF files to avoid lossy compression.

The true test of a camera is the quality of pictures it takes. In this area, I was very pleased. Even on the shots taken in less than ideal conditions, the data captured was good. One image in particular was taken into a setting sun and so the people in the foreground were badly shadowed. A quick filter in my image editing software was able to bring the people out of the shadows. Another shot was taken out of the flash's range and again the picture was easily edited to be excellent. My only images that caused problems were due to issues with the autofocus. I was shooting sunset scenes and the low level of light wasn't enough for the autofocus to work correctly. By slightly adjusting the angle of the shot, I was able to get things focused and get an excellent image.

Having a 6X optical zoom was great. There was also a 2.5X digital zoom. When looking through the viewfinder, there was a line that showed when you moved from the desired optical zoom to the not-so-desirable digital zoom. Plus you had to click on the zoom control an additional time to get to the digital zoom.

Overall I really liked the camera. My knocks against it are for not supplying rechargeable batteries, not supporting lossless formats and the limitations of the memory card. We can solve that by purchasing a larger memory card and our own batteries. Given the very reasonable price of the camera when compared with other similar models, the Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom is a real bargain. If you don't need more than 2 megapizels, give this camera a good long look.

Note: Due to the fact that compressing and shrinking the images for display on the Internet would degrade their quality, I have chosen not to show any pictures taken with the camera. Suffice it to say, I had no problems at all with the quality of images I took.

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Foster D. Coburn III has written six best-selling books on graphics software and is currently the Webmaster of the Graphics Unleashed Web site.

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