Fujifilm.

Personal Fujifilm Finepix 2600 Zoom Camera Review.

This was the second digital camera that I purchased myself to replace the Fujifilm DX-10, this came about when dust got into the works of the DX-10 and would have cost the price of a new camera to get it cleaned professionally so I opted for a new camera instead. Ironically after buying the camera I took the old DX-10 apart and was able to clean it myself so I was left with two working cameras.

A new feature that this camera came with was a zoom lens, the optical zoom claims to be 3x which is the bit that counts, the digital zoom feature can be achieved with most picture editing software so it does not really count for much unless you want to get a print direct from the camera, my advice is to forget about the digital zoom feature and just use the cameras optical zoom.

This camera was OK in it's day even if it was a bit bulky but by today's standards 2 Million pixels is a bit lame. The controls on this camera were quite well laid out with regards to the menu operations but the sliding on/off switch come lens cover at the front was a bit awkward and quite often the camera could accidentally get turned off by knocking the cover when in use taking a picture as the spring clip to hold it open was a bit weak!

Funnily enough I never really got to use this camera for much as it was not that long after buying it that I took a fancy to the Fujifilm Finepix F420 being taken in by the promise of a 6 Million pixel camera when in reality it is a software enhanced 3 Million pixel camera however the pictures that I did take with it turned out reasonable and a decent 6 inch by 4 inch print could be achieved.

The batteries seemed to last quite a time assuming you did not use the zoom to often as being motorized it obviously used power, the screen was a fair size to but it was difficult to see in bright sunlight even at the screens highest brightness setting, however there was an optical viewer that could be used as long as you did not rely on it for close up photography as you would suffer parallax error.

As with most of the Fujifilm cameras I have owned this one did not perform to well in dark situations. The inbuilt flash seemed to cope quite well in most cases but the auto focus was a bit of a nightmare for unless the subject was well lit or had a definite contrast to it the camera failed to auto focus so it was pretty hit and miss what sort of picture you got in dark conditions.

The "Close Up" or "Macro" setting was a similar story with regards to focusing, although once the camera did finally manage to focus it took a pretty good picture. A trick I used to use if I could not get a focus lock was to try to focus on a different subject the same distance away as the attempted subject then holding the shutter release down at stage one, move back to the original subject and complete the shutter sequence, again this method was a bit hit and miss but I did achieve some fair results.

Compared to the camera that this one replaced this one was a definite step up the ladder with regards to features and technological improvement but it did suffer the afore mentioned pitfalls. For the money spent and the quality of camera I got I suppose it could be classed as "fair" compared to some of the other manufacturers cameras though I daresay a few extra pounds could have bought a much better camera.
All said and done I would say I was reasonably happy with this camera but if I had my choice over again it could well be a different camera that was chosen knowing what I know now!

One final point, this camera has been passed around among family and friends and has now had numerous owners, however it is still going strong but it has managed to get a bit "beaten up" so apologies for the dodgy pictures of the camera on this page as I had to borrow it back in order to photograph it and it has been through the mill somewhat!

Included in the Kit: