FUJIFILM FinePix A400 Digital Camera

My wife and I bought this FujiFilm camera for my 16 year old daughter last Christmas. The priorities were that it have a decent megapixel resolution (3-5 mp) and be small enough to put in a girl's purse or small pocket. Oh, and be "cute".

I admit I had to have me daughter pick out three cameras she liked the looks of, that also fit the other requirements. The Fuji A400 was her second choice and my first choice of the three. So, that's what she got.

Up until June of this year, the camera worked very well. With four automatic modes: portrait, landscape, sport, and night, the pictures were very good, generally, with natural color results. The zoom is barely there, at 3X, but it was as much as my daughter required.

While not as configurable as I'd personally prefer, this is a typical snapshot camera, good for better than basic picture taking. It's shutter speed varies from 2 seconds to 1/1500 second so it's adequate for some action shots, but you'll be lucky to get more than one as the shutter delay is a few seconds on the subsequent shot. The macro function is OK, usable as close as 2.6 feet.

The camera only requires two AA batteries and lasts a good while as long as you don't use flash. Otherwise it's good for 30-40 pictures at high resolution with flash. It is also recognized by the Windows operating system (Windows 98, 2000 & XP )as a portable media drive, so no software is required to copy or move your photos from the camera to PC.

My biggest disappointment with this camera has been it's reliability. In June of this year, it stopped powering up properly. I sent it in to be repaired under warranty to the nearest Fuji certified repair shop. After six weeks, we received it back and it worked fine...for two weeks. It went dead and has been returned for warranty service and is STILL in the process of being repaired.

Overall, it's left a very bad taste in my mouth for Fuji cameras. I'd recommend Canon, Minolta or Olympus for decent affordable cameras.