In summary
Designed for snapshooters, Fujifilm’s S3500 has SLR-like styling, a light plastic body and pop-up flash and comes with a clip-on lens cap and screw-in lens hood. Four shooting modes are provided – auto, scene position, manual and movie – and the scene menu has only four settings: portrait, landscape, sport and night. The manual mode is the only one where users can set exposure and flash compensation, adjust the white balance and sharpness and use the aperture priority mode (which has three aperture settings). . . [more]
Full review
Designed for snapshooters, Fujifilm’s S3500 has SLR-like styling, a light plastic body and pop-up flash and comes with a clip-on lens cap and screw-in lens hood. Four shooting modes are provided – auto, scene position, manual and movie – and the scene menu has only four settings: portrait, landscape, sport and night. The manual mode is the only one where users can set exposure and flash compensation, adjust the white balance and sharpness and use the aperture priority mode (which has three aperture settings). The S3500’s electronic viewfinder is clear and quite colour-accurate but it lacks a diopter adjustment and the LCD monitor is small with relatively low resolution. On-screen warnings are provided for focusing errors and camera shake but no continuous shooting mode is provided.
The test camera’s images were a little soft and, although colours were accurate, contrast and saturation were rather high. Digital zoom shots were slightly softer than those taken with the full optical zoom. Low light shots were clean with little image noise. It took roughly three seconds to ‘wake’ the camera and capture lag averaged 0.7 seconds, reducing to an average shutter lag of 0.2 seconds when shots were pre-focused.
Strengths
- Relatively low price
- Simple to use
- Focus and camera shake warnings
- Flash output adjustable
Weaknesses
- Images slightly soft
- No ISO adjustments
- 2-second shutter speed limit [BG05]
Specifications
Image sensor: 5.27 x 3.96 mm square pixel CCD with 4,230,000 photosites (4.0 megapixels effective)
Lens: 6-36mm Fujinon f2.8-3.0 zoom (39-234mm in 35mm format)
Zoom ratio: 6x optical, up to 3.4x digital zoom (resolution linked)
Dimensions (wxhxd): 99.7 x 77.3 x 69.3mm
Weight: 285g (without batteries and card)
Retailers
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Electronics Warehouse
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Ted’s Cameras
1800 186 895
Big range of cameras and photographic products with stores in most states and online.
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