Fuji (Film) Mighty Finepix S3000 Digital Camera

Author's Rating:

Pros: Easy to use, picture quality is great, 6x zoom, light.

Cons: Be prepared to read the manual and I guess the shutter lag? maybe

The Bottom Line: 
This is a great, affordable, easy to use camera that gives good quality pictures.

Author's Review
After months and months of reading how to buy a digital camera and which one I should buy I was getting closer to understanding digital cameras and knowing what I want. If you are new to the digital camera world you do need to understand a few things about digital cameras and I will say what is crucial to know just to save you the work.

I ended up reading Consumer Reports as well as epinions. They liked the FujiFilm FinePix S3000. I was so tired of talking about cameras with my husband that I went to our local camera store and spent 1 1/2 hours with the manager. I walked out with a $299 camera and $100 worth of accessories! You will see it for less online. That low price is refurbished. You will also see it online for $250. I got a $50 gift card which I used for accessories making it a wash and rather than buying something like this online I now have a relationship with a camera store. (Just my biased opinion in this case.)

Ok let’s talk about the camera – what did I get for my money:

The camera comes with a 16 MB xD Picture Card. This is the memory. It will hold around 16 pictures. (Understand somewhat what an MB is will be important when you are asked if you want to upgrade. I talk about this a bit at the end.)

Digital 4 AA-size alkaline batteries, a shoulder strap, which is a thin strap and made of suede, a lens adapter ring (gives extra protection to the lens) and a lens cap. The lens cap is of course attached by a string to the camera. But also it has a hook on the inside of it, which allows me to hook it onto the strap, so it isn’t swinging around while I take pictures.

It also comes with a USB Cable, FinePixViewer 4.1 and an ImageMixer VCD 2 for FinePix.

This camera replaced the 3800. They are identical except for one not so small thing. There is a video out jack on the side of the 3000. This allows me to play my pictures on my television.

It is considered a camera for the ordinary user. It is not intended for the professional because of the number of pixels. (Very important word to understand so you'll know if you want 2 or as many as 5. I read that professionals would want to go with 5 million pixels. I read that the average user would want to go with 3 rather than 2 unless they were just starting out and taking still landscape pictures. We have been photographing our life for 20 years with Minolta and Yashica 35-millimeter cameras. We are not new to the camera world so I wanted one higher than 2. The FinePix has 3.2. This number will give you the quality you want whether it is through prints or e-mail. This will produce images of 2048 x 1536 (3.15 million) recorded pixels for prints up to 8 x 10 inches in size.

The Fuji S3000 allows you to switch from 3M down to 03M. The higher the pixel (3) the more memory it will take up on your card. The LCD displays the pictures in one of the modes. For example if I switch to 2 and I want to see them displayed I will see 8 pictures at one time, 1 will give me 11 and so on. This is a bit confusing. As long as you have the basic concept down you'll be able to use these features, don't worry.

It has a 6x optical zoom. (This is a must know. You have to understand the zoom capabilities unless you don't intend to do any zooming.) My Minolta has a lens of 30x 70. In comparison, my Fuji’s 6x optical changes the 70 to 228. That is a huge difference and one thing I always regretted was never buying a stronger lens so I didn’t want to make that mistake again. 3x optical zoom is very common and what you will see most often.

My camera is not pocket sized. The ones I saw that were only had 3x zoom. It measures 3.9” wide x 3” high x 2.7 inches deep. It weighs 10 ounces without batteries. It is silver and I think very pretty. You can see in the picture that the right side of it curves. This makes it really, really easy to hold.

It has 2 viewfinders. One is a traditional black rubber lens and the other is an LCD lens. When the camera is on you have the option of pressing a button if you want to use the LCD lens. I use it 99% of the time.

You can use the automatic or semi-manual focus. I have only used automatic. On the button that easily presses down to take a picture you will find the off mode, picture taking mode and a back mode. After I take a picture, I then just wait 2 seconds and turn it back. I will then see the picture I just took and have the option to delete it or not.

Next to the LCD lens are 3 modes. One is menu and this is where you can erase or be asked if you want to go back. The second mode takes you back and the third, which says DISP, displays the pictures you have taken.

The literature says that you can take 350 pictures using the LCD monitor and with the flash on half of the time on one set of 4 AA alkaline batteries. I never counted but I know from both the manager of the camera store and my own use that it will run between 45 minutes to 1-½ hours continuously on the batteries. This is not a camera you want to keep on. One of our accessories was a battery charger but I would recommend strongly that you remember to shut it off when you aren’t using it.

The camera offers AVI movie recording at 10 frames per second without sound. Movies can be burned onto CD-ROMs for storage using the ImageMixer VCD 2 for FinePix software included with the camera, or shown on televisions using the video out interface, which I mentioned above.

Although I mentioned the zoom- 6x optical and digital zoom- 3.2x (640 x 480), 1.6x (1280 x 960), 1.28x (1600 x 1200) I wanted to help you out by saying that it is the optical not the digital that is important. Sometimes you will see a combined zoom number. Find out how that breaks down before you think that the camera you are buying is 10x zoom!

This camera can be used with IBM or a compatible as well as Macintosh.

So I got that over with, how did I manage to get it to work, download the pictures, and what are the pictures like?

One at a time. It did take a few days of reading the instructions to get this all down but once we did it was a piece of cake. The first thing is to install the FinePixViewer CD, which comes with the camera. That was easy. Just follow the steps. Even my old computer handled loading that and handles downloading the pictures. Really it is just a matter of putting it in the CD holder and clicking next or ok when asked. It takes about 15 minutes.

Then I was ready to take pictures. I started with things I wanted to sell on eBay, the rising sun (actually the earth lowers, the sun doesn’t rise), the storm we had and friends.

It is a snap to download them. You have a USB port on the back of your computer. The camera comes with a cable that plugs into the port from your camera and the pictures download. I haven’t downloaded 100 pictures at a time so it only takes moments, but they do sell an accessory for around $20 that will make downloading that many pictures faster.

I read that a couple of people thought the 3800 LCD’s quality was grainy. I don’t find that at all with the 3000. There is a pop up flash that works as well as any kind of flash I have had on my cameras. I have never been able to take night pictures all that well but I get a semblance of what I saw (fireworks, for example). You will find cameras that will accept an additional flash so if you are taking pictures at night a lot, that is something you’ll want to consider.

The pictures printed, downloaded and “developed” at CVS for 29 cents a picture have all been very nice. We don’t have a special printer for our camera and it isn’t something we have a need to do. Downloading them to send and having prints for my albums was what I wanted. What is so nice with digital cameras is that I don’t have to say, “Why did I ever take 3 pictures of that giraffe?” or be afraid one picture of my family won’t come out so I take 3. You will really waste fewer pictures. I hate to throw pictures away – but 3 giraffes? So now I don’t have to worry about that.

My final thoughts:

Do I recommend this camera? Absolutely. We were going to go with a Cannon (recommended by Business Week for $399 and with the accessories we would have ended up spending $500. For $399 complete I have a great little camera, granted not pocket sized, but light and comfortable to use and it gives me great pictures.

It is so easy to use. Truthfully I was terrified. I didn’t want to take it out of the box! But I did and once I got over being afraid of it (someone told me it wouldn’t bite) I had fun learning to use it and I love to use it now.

As far as accessories, I told you about the battery charger, which you do not need but I bought. I also bought (I was alone during this buying process remember.) a camera case and since I knew 16 MB was not going to be enough space I went for the 128! That cost $70 but 64 was going to cost me $50 so I splurged and we can take pictures without any worry of running out of memory.

One interesting aspect I am adding after I went to put in the price, etc. One question asks about shutter lag. There is a lag of 2 seconds from pressing the button and the actual taking of the picture. Once I used it I found it totally acceptable. I was shocked to see that a 2 second lag is considered bad. In fact I mentioned it to my husband who was shocked as well because Consumer Reports rated the 2 second lag compared to other cameras as good.

There is a limited 1 year warranty. We never buy warranties. When I went in by myself I was tempted. It is expensive - $48 for one year!! I know my husband, the accountant, thinks warranties are not an efficient way to spend money. I had 10 days to think about it. He went in to the store with me after I bought it and we bought the warranty. Even he agreed that since this was our first digital camera it might be a wise investment. The warranty included running over the camera, dropping it in water - everything except losing it.

Please feel free to leave me a comment or a question. If I left out something technical that you want to know I will find the answer for it. If it is non-technical I probably won’t have to find it I will just leave the answer for you or you can e-mail me.