Looks attractive, great build quality, easy to use
Disadvantages:
Struggles in low light conditions, no sound in video
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
The Fujifilm Finepix A610 was launched last year as an budget digital camera, at a low price of $129.00 and the most surprising thing about the Finepix A610 is that, for a budget camera, it looks quite expensive, with its nice metal finish. It certainly makes other digital cameras in the same price range appear toy like in comparison.
Opening the Box
Opening the box you will find the usual manuals and quick setup guides, the camera, a usb cable, a video cable, 2xAA alkaline batteries, a hand strap, and the software on CD-ROM. Its all neatly packaged in the way that you know once you take the stuff out of the box its never all going to fit back into it the same way, ever. These packaging people really are miracle workers.
Anyway, some important specs of the camera are as follows:
6.3 Megapixels 2.5 inch TFT LCD monitor Optical zoom: 3x Digital zoom: 18.6x ISO: 100/200/400 Movie up to 320 x 480 (without sound) Internal Memory: 10MB Memory Cards Supported: xD and SD cards Connections: USB, Video Out, Infrared
Usability
The main aspect of this particular camera is that it is really very easy to use, which I suppose is a good idea since it is being marketed as an entry level camera. The on screen menu is very user friendly and the buttons on the camera are well placed out and it is easy to determine what each button does almost as soon as you set eyes on it. They've kept the number of buttons to a minimum, with only a menu button, which is orbited by 4 function buttons (delete, flash options, self timer and macro shooting modes), and these buttons also double up as your means for navigation through the camera's user interface. The camera also adds a "display/back" button and a "play" button, which brings you into the view mode for your photos. The only other buttons on the camera aside from these are the power button (very important) and the shutter button (also important, if you want your camera to take photos!). The camera also has a conveniently placed zoom ring which you will find around the shutter button, as with a lot of cameras. Overall I really believe that you won't find a better layout and easy to use camera in this price range.
Performance
I found the picture quality in this camera to be really good for it being a budget one. In daylight the camera really is quality and on the highest resolution settings you are going to see some great, clear photographs. The quality here isn't going to bother more mid level cameras, but it is definitely good enough for someone starting off or just for normal everyday use. The colors are vivid enough and the brightness in the images is also acceptable. The camera does tend to struggle though in low lighting conditions and as this is a budget camera it does not feature an auto focus illuminator to light up the subject and help the camera focus so as a result the camera is unable to focus in low light, so bear this in mind! I find it really hard to take nice pictures of things like buildings at night time, as you use the flash as the object is too far away, and if you turn off the flash you have the problems of image stabilization. There are a number of shooting mode presets for different conditions which adjust your settings automatically based on the condition, for example: we have presets for beach, snow, fireworks, sunset, party etc, and I find these work pretty well, and they are better than adjusting the settings manually, especially when you aren't so sure what you are doing with the manual settings, so it helps you out from the very start. The macro shooting is actually quite good too, I have taken a number of really nice close up shots and they appeared very clear, but I have read that it can only focus 10cm away from the subject, which is not as good as other cameras.The video shooting is handy, but I really miss the ability to record sound. The next camera in the same range does support sound in video, so perhaps it was removed for this camera to keep the costs down. The camera comes with 10MB built in, which is enough for about 6 pictures, so you may want to pick up an xD or SD memory card like I did, mines was 1GB which I find is enough for my requirements.
The camera also allows you to have different flash options, such as force flash, auto flash, red eye reduction and suppressed flash, for whatever your requirements. There is also a handy self timer which can be set to 2 seconds or 10 seconds. The optical zoom up to 3x works very well and the digital zoom up to 18.6x is as OK as digital zoom can be, although I haven't used it much. The shutter lag isn't too bad and it is very quick at taking single snaps, but the shutter lags when taking more than one picture at a time, but this isn't really something that most people would care about.
Conclusion
So, overall I was very impressed with this little camera for the price! After I bought it for weeks I assumed that the shop just had a very good deal on, due to the quality of the camera, but after reading up on it I learned that the camera was designed as a budget model, so I was quite surprised to learn that! The picture quality is very good, its easy to use, and despite a few small problems that are common among all budget cameras this is a quality camera. If you are looking for your first digital camera and don't want to spend too much then you really can't go wrong here.Thanks for reading, and if you require more info on this product, just check out my video review here on Ciao!
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