One of the hottest Christmas gifts last year was the Fuji FinePix 2800Z (see our review). And I wasn’t surprised at all. The 2800 broke out of the boring field of 3X zoom cameras, featuring a 6X zoom lens for a great price.
Fuji is at it again this year with the FinePix 3800 ($449), which uses the same lens, but bumps the resolution to 3.2 Megapixel, adds support for conversion lenses, and switches from SmartMedia to the new xD Picture Card format. I don’t have to tell you that these are going to go quickly!
Should the FinePix 3800 be under your tree this year? Find out in our review!
What’s in the Box?
The FinePix 3800 has an above average bundle. Inside the box, you’ll find:
The 3.2 (effective) Mpixel Fuji FinePix 3800 camera
16MB xD Picture Card
Four AA alkaline batteries
Adapter ring
Lens cap w/strap
Neck strap
USB cable
CD-ROM featuring FinePixViewer software and drivers
134 page manual
You’re on your own as far as batteries go, as the 3800 includes four AA alkalines that will quickly run out of juice. I highly recommend buying two or more sets of NiMH rechargeables, which will lost longer and protect the environment too. Fuji estimates that you’ll take about 320 photos (assuming you use the EVF) with alkaline batteries, and 350 with NiMH rechargeables.
One of the big features of the 3800 is its use of xD Picture Cards, instead of SmartMedia like previous Fuji cameras. xD cards are very small – perhaps too much so. They are faster than other memory cards out there (on paper at least), but I still wish we didn’t have another memory card format to deal with. The included 16MB card is enough to get started, but you’ll probably want a larger one soon after buying the camera.
The 3800 has a huge lens cap, as you can see. Speaking of which, I’m very pleased that Fuji supports conversion lenses on the 3800. Better yet, they have included the adapter (shown later in the review) in the box. The lens adapter also doubles as a lens hood, for shooting outdoors. There are two conversion lenses available, each priced at $179. The WL-FX9 wide-angle lens has a magnification ratio of 0.79, which means you can shoot at 30 mm. The other lens is the TL-FX9 tele converter, which magnifies things 1.5X, for a grand total of 340 mm. Remember that you can only use these at the end of the zoom range: wide-angle with the wide converter, telephoto with the tele converter.
Other FinePix accessories include a camera case, AC adapter, xD USB card reader, and xD PC Card adapter.
The 3800 works fine with Mac OS X and iPhoto. While I can’t confirm it, it should work fine with Windows XP as well.
I am pleased to say that FinePixViewer is now Mac OS X compatible, and is greatly improved over its Mac OS 9 predecessor. It’s snappy and much more useable than ever before. The software is only really useful for viewing and rotating images – you can’t correct redeye or anything like that.
If you use a Windows-based PC, you can also use the 3800 as a “PC cam” for video conferencing. I haven’t tried it though.
Fuji’s manuals have always been better than average, and that continues to be the case here.
Look and Feel
The FinePix 3800 is a well-built, mostly plastic camera. It looks a little strange, but I found it very easy to hold and operate. There’s a large grip for your right hand which makes it easy to keep the camera steady.
The dimensions of the camera are 3.9 x 3.0 x 2.7 inches (W x H x D), and it weighs 295 grams empty. It’s not a small camera by any means and probably won’t fit in your pocket. At the same time, it was never a burden to carry around.
Let’s start our tour of the 3800 now!
The biggest feature on the 3800 is undoubtedly its 6X Fujinon zoom lens. This F2.8-F3.0 lens has a focal range of 6 - 36 mm, which is equivalent to 38 - 228 mm. As I mentioned earlier, the lens is threaded and you can add conversion lenses.
Directly above the lens is the 3800’s pop-up flash. The flash has a working range of 0.3 - 3.5 m at wide-angle, and 0.8 - 3.5 m at telephoto. This camera does not support an external flash.
The three little holes just northeast of the lens make up the microphone.
That’s the last item on the front of camera. Keeping with recent Fuji tradition, there’s no AF illuminator lamp, which means that for low-light photography will be frustrated.
On the back of the 3800, you can see the 1.8" LCD display. One thing I don’t like about Fuji’s mid and lower-end cameras are their low resolution LCDs. This one here has only 62,000 pixels. For the sake of comparison, the Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi (the last camera I tested) had twice that number. The images on the LCD aren’t bad, they just aren’t really sharp. Like most LCDs, it becomes harder to use in bright light outdoors. It’s also quite grainy in low light.
Straight above the LCD is the electronic viewfinder, or EVF. EVFs are the norm for cameras with a big zoom lens. An EVF is a little LCD screen that you look at through the viewfinder. It shows the same thing as the LCD, and virtually 100% of the frame. Fuji has a large rubber eye piece which helps keep your nose off the LCD. The two negatives here are the lack of a diopter correction knob (to focus the image on the EVF), and the fact that it becomes unusable in low light. Cranking up the brightness does not help matters.
The camera’s default is to use the EVF in record and movie mode. To switch between the EVF and LCD, you can press the button between the two.
To the right of the EVF is the four-way switch. In addition to menu navigation, this is used for controlling the zoom, activating macro mode, and changing the flash mode (between auto, auto w/redeye reduction, forced, slow synchro, and slow synchro w/redeye reduction). The zoom controls move the 6X from wide to telephoto in about 2 seconds.
The three buttons to the right of the LCD are fairly self-explanatory. The Disp button toggles the information shown on the LCD/EVF.
I had to brace the camera with the lens cap, which is why this shot looks a bit funny.
On the top of the camera, you’ll find the mode wheel (two of them, actually), and the shutter release button. The mode wheel around the shutter release button moves between off, playback mode, and record mode.
The other mode wheel will move you between movie, auto record, scene, and manual record modes. Auto record mode is totally point and shoot. Manual mode opens up all the menus, but the controls you’ll find aren’t really that advanced. More on those later.
The scene mode has a number of presets for various situations. This includes:
Portrait
Scene (landscape)
Sports
Night Scene - only way to get long exposures, with up to 3 sec shutter speed
Continuous - takes two shots in a row at about 1 frame/sec
Well that last one isn’t very exciting. But I did find that the night scene mode was the only way I could pull off a respectable night shot. But more on that later in the review.
There’s a lot to see on this side of the camera!
The first thing that I want to point out is the conversion lens adapter that I screwed on. The lens cap sort of fits on it, but it doesn’t like to stay put.
There are two I/O ports to see here: USB and DC in (for optional AC adapter). There is no video out on the FinePix 3800.
Just above those is the xD Picture Card slot, with the included 16MB card shown at right. Pretty tiny!
Further up, we have the speaker. Above that is the release for the pop-up flash.
The only thing over here is the connector for the neck strap
On the bottom of the camera you’ll find the battery compartment (note clever use of one battery to brace the camera) and a tripod mount. I’m not 100% positive, but I think the tripod mount is metal.
Using the Fuji FinePix 3800
Record Mode
The FinePix 3800 has an impressive startup time of just over 2.5 seconds. The EVF is turned on when you start the camera, and the LCD is off.