The Fuji Finepix A700 is a seven megapixel digital camera with a three times optical zoom lens. The beauty of this camera is the fact that it is so easy to use. Fuji have clearly put a lot of thought into the design of the camera and the Finepix A700 is one of the most simple digital cameras on the market.
There are certainly less buttons and general controls on this camera than on a typical model. The biggest difference I noticed though is in the menu system. It probably has less options then any other digital camera I have tested apart from other models in the same range.
You can't have everything though and this does mean that the A700 has less features than the average camera. If you are looking for a straightforward point and shoot digital camera though you will still find all the features you need to take simple snapshots.
The Finepix A700 uses AA batteries. This means that more or less wherever you are you should be able to pick up a set of replacement batteries if you need to. If you are planning to take your camera everywhere you go with you then I would suggest considering picking up a set of rechargeable batteries if you don't already own some. The key to buying rechargeable batteries for a digital camera is the mAh rating. This rating should be stamped on the side of each battery. The higher the rating the longer the battery will go between charges. I always recommend a minimum rating of 2000. Go higher if you can.
The camera weighs in at 139g and has dimensions of 93 x 60 x 30.1mm. This makes it on the large side for slipping into a pocket. It has a fairly rugged feel in the hand and in my opinion the build quality feels superior to other digital cameras at this end of the price range. Talking of price you can buy the Finepix A700 for around £100 at the time of shooting the video. That is about standard for this type of camera.
Despite its low price and slimmed down set of features Fuji have still added a large 2.4" LCD screen for composing your shots. This is a good size and although there is a movement towards larger screens not all entry level digital cameras have one this size.
Photos can either be stored in the camera's internal memory or on xD Picture cards. The internal memory is small at 12mb and will soon fill up if you are taking seven megapixel photos. Therefore you will need to budget for a larger capacity card when you are buying.
One area where the Finepix A700 lags behind other cameras is with its movie mode. The highest resolution available is 320 x 240 pixels. At this resolution you can only shoot one minute of movie footage. The maximum recording time of any movie is just three minutes. Other digital cameras allow you to shoot movie footage until the memory card is full.
