Fuji Finepix A800 Review

The Fuji Finepix A800 is one of the increasingly large number of digital cameras available for under £100. It has a fairly minimal set of features and is therefore one of the easiest to use cameras you are likely to come across. The Finepix A800 has eight megapixels and a three times zoom lens.

As I have come to expect from cameras selling for around the £100 mark and just under lowlight photography can be a problem. I also found a few focusing problems even in good light with the Finepix A800.

I was not that impressed with the sharpness of all three of my outdoor scenic shots. It appears that any photos taken at distance could have a problem. Move closer in and the performance of the camera starts to improve. Out of these three shots, photos one and three where the lens is zoomed in struggle the most. The wide angle shot (test photo 2) is better, but there is a fall off in focusing towards the edges of the shot.

Glare from the sun is handled well and darker areas have a good level of detail for a camera in this price bracket.

In the second shot there are darker areas creeping into the corners of the shot as well.

My test for colour underlines the fact that there is plenty of depth to the colours produced by the Finepix A800. In my opinion this is not overdone and you should be able to take some vivid, colourful photos with the camera.

The outdoor portrait shot also shows plenty of colour. There is a warm feel to the photo and I would be happy to have taken this shot with a move expensive camera. More light would have improved the photo further.

Moving indoors and running some lowlight tests the Finepix A800 hits serious difficulties. Neither the indoor portrait nor the shot of beer bottles is focused properly. There is little you can do to get round this problem apart from ensuring that for every photo you make available as much light as possible. Turn on every light and use window light whenever you can.

For a camera in this price bracket the macro shot is above average. In fact it is a pretty good shot. As I have noticed with other Fuji digital cameras there is a touch of purple showing here and there in the silver areas around the watch face.

There's no doubt that ISO 400 the picture quality is better than what I have become accustomed to seeing. Push the ISO setting up to ISO 800 though and deterioration is a more serious issue.

I don't think I can remember testing a camera that was so erratic when it came to my shutter lag tests. The figures it produced seemed to change all the time! Taking average times from the tests, a single photo took 0.33 seconds and five photos took 12.40 seconds. With flash it increased to 0.50 seconds for a single photo and 22.68 seconds for five. Flash recycling does slow the camera down, but all the other times are quire respectable.

The Finepix A800 is a pretty conventional digital camera. The emphasis isn't really on style, but Fuji have built a solid camera for the price.

97.5 x 61.9 x 31mm

151g

Two AA.

xD or SD cards. 10MB built in memory (enough for around 4 photos).

Exceptional

Easy to use - Solid build

Picture quality could be better - Small internal memory

In my opinion a camera lives or dies on the quality of photos it produces. Therefore the Fuji Finepix A800 dies! I know it's pretty cheap, but if you are able to spend that bit more you will be able to buy yourself a much better digital camera.

Front View

Back View

Top View

Sample Menus

Although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information on this site, please make sure you double check the feature set and specification at the point of purchase.

Fuji Finepix A800