Fujifilm FinePix J28 10MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

5 Responses to “Fujifilm FinePix J28 10MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom”

1. Alex Fielding
   October 31, 2009 at 8:55 am

   I was curious about this camera and I am guessing it is probably a nice unit. Fuji is a respected name in photography. The problem I have is with the 7 reviews, all 5’s. Each one sounds like it was scripted to accentuate how wonderful the camera is, including a detailed list of its great features, much like a professional advertisement. One or two like this I can accept, but not all seven. I’ll wait until some more less biased sounding reviews hit before I take too much stock in these current reviews.
   Rating: 5 / 5
2. Larry Diamond
   October 31, 2009 at 11:42 am

   Confessions of a point and shooter; I grew up with photography as a big hobby and was committed to SLR photography and developing my own photos. Over the years I kind of slipped away and when digital photography started to blossom I started getting point and shoot cameras. I now also have a DSLR which I love. I love the quality, the control, the options, the creativity. But here is my confession, I still probably use the point and shoot cameras in our house more. They are just so easy to use, easy to manage (fit in a pocket), and produce good results. They can also capture video something my particular DSLR can not do. If you absolutely had to give me a choice of one digital camera I would stay with my DSLR. But as I said I use my point and shoot cameras more frequently as the way things seem to work out; short road trips, camping, day at the ballpark, etc. they are just easier to use a lot of the time. So there is a definite place for a point and shoot camera for almost everyone.

   The J28 is a solid performer with a lot of great features that are very useful to the consumer that happens to be at a good price. That is important, a good price doesn’t mean anything if the camera can not perform. First it captures colors well with good saturation in most situations. For me after a few weeks of use, I got consistently good results indoors and good to ok results outdoors. In tricky outdoor lighting situations on automatic scene recognition (which most people will use most of the time) you are not going to get perfect exposure. But the colors outdoors were well represented and I appreciated the detail, it has a good quality lens.

   Cool features: the J28 has a number of really neat features especially at its price point. First is a rechargeable battery that can be re-charged inside the camera. A charge lasts a long time. The camera is also small and lightweight although it has a more plastic feel to it than digital ELPH cameras from Canon that I have used and still use. The menu system is easy to use and you have some cool options I have not seen on other point and shoot cameras. You can actually crop a picture during view picture mode. It was pretty easy to do. It also has a panorama feature that lets you `stitch’ 3 pictures together (I have had this on other point and shoot and I like it). The J28 takes decent video but like many point and shoots you can not zoom once you start taking the video. The scene recognition mode works well and I have taken some decent close-ups using the macro mode.

   The primary draw back is as mentioned before it has real trouble in tough exposure situations. Also the included software literally did not work for me. It installed correctly, the drivers installed correctly, but the software would not download pictures from the camera. I have had well over a dozen point and shoot cameras over the years and this has never happened to me. On windows it was no big deal, the computer did recognize it as a storage device and I got the pictures out easily enough. It was definitely odd though.

   Bottom line is a well-thought out consumer point and shoot. Are there better point and shoot cameras out there that produce better shots? Yes. Are there many cameras out there that produce the well reproduced colors of shots this camera does and include so many useful and neat features in a very small and lightweight package? No. This will definitely be in my pocket for a long time, very easy to take, and be there when I need it and I most likely would not have brought my DSLR along.
   
   Rating: 4 / 5
3. Shevi
   October 31, 2009 at 1:39 pm

   If you’re looking for a cheap camera that’s easy to use and takes great pictures, the Fuji FinePix J28 is a pretty good choice.

   It’s light-weight, attractive and very compact, fitting easily into a pocket or a purse. There are very few buttons on the back and the icons are fairly easy to understand. On screen choices are written in plain English. While there are several settings to choose from–portrait, landscape, night, macro, night portrait, backlight portrait and panorama–I only used the auto setting for all the shots I took, and I was very pleased with the results. The colors were good, the sharpness of the photos was excellent, so much so that I could blow up just a small part of a picture and still have a great picture.

   I was particularly impressed by the camera’s ability to take pictures in low light. Indoor pictures are so bright they look like they were taken outdoors, and pictures taken at twilight look like they were taken at sunset. I was also impressed that the automatic red-eye correction actually works. I’ve seen other cameras that claim to have this feature still take pictures with red eye, but so far no red eye with this camera. I was a little less impressed with the anti-blur feature. It’s pretty good, but I still found some blurring here and there. The camera is relatively quick to take a picture, which is great. The last thing you want is for the scene you’re trying to take a picture of to disappear as your subject walks away between the time you press on the button and the camera snaps the picture. I haven’t found that a problem with this camera.

   The display is a decent size, but there’s no viewfinder. This bothers me for two reasons: first, the constant use of the digital display eats up the battery’s power, and second, it can be fairly difficult to make out what you’re taking a picture of when sunlight is reflecting off the display. If I could change a few things on this camera, it would be add a viewfinder, increase the optical zoom, and add a wide-angle lens. Granted, the crispness of the photos mean you can “zoom” in at home when you manipulate your pictures on your computer, and a wide-angle lens would let in less light, which means the night and indoor shots wouldn’t be as impressive as they are, so there are advantages to the way the camera is.

   One more thing if you’re planning to buy this camera: remember to get a SDHC card! With a 10 megapixel camera, you’re going to need it. 2-4 GB should be fine.

   So if you’re looking for an affordable, easy-to-use digital camera to capture the special moments in your life, the Fuji FinePix J28 is a good choice.
   
   Rating: 5 / 5
4. E. David Swan
   October 31, 2009 at 2:02 pm

   This is the fourth digital camera I’ve owned and so far my favorite has been the Olympus FE-340 8.0 m with 5x optical zoom. I had written an entire review comparing the two camera’s with the point being that my venerable Olympus took better photos then the much newer Fujifilm FinePix. This was the plan until I discovered that my Olympus was selling on Amazon for $343.98 compared to the $99.95 listed price of the FinePix. I can assure you I paid nothing close to the $340 when I bought the Olympus at Circuit City last year but it wouldn’t be fair to compare the two since the FinePix is clearly a budget priced camera. Just holding the two in my hands I can feel the much higher quality of craftsmanship in the Olympus and the only thing the FinePix seemed to be superior in was in the crispness of detail in blown up pictures which is exactly what I would expect given its higher pixel count.

   The FinePix is a budget camera with budget quality. It’s worthless on night shots and unlike my Olympus doesn’t keep the shutter open long enough to allow in any light (not that the Olympus takes great night shot). I had a real tough time with close up shots in flower (macro) mode and continually got the red reticule of doom. When I tried to take a picture of a pepper growing in my garden the FinePix stubbornly refused to focus on the pepper no matter how I adjusted and always focused on the ground (which did look stunningly clear). I took some close up photos of my herb garden and I have to say that in this case the FinePix was both clearer and more natural looking than the Olympus. If you’re looking to take crisp close up shots I would definitely recommend a camera with a 5x optical zoom.

   On tough shots the FinePix fails but if you’re looking to get some easy shots in normal light it works fine. Sometimes I got some graininess on my indoor shots and other times it looked fine. I took a walk around my office shooting pictures of stairwells and hallways and a copier and for a budget prices camera is seemed to do just fine. In fact the indoor close-up shots looked pretty good, you just can’t get as close as you can with a 5x optical zoom. Any close than say 6 to 7 inches and the camera cannot get focus. I took some outdoor shots on a cloudy day and they looked very nice and well detailed. One feature that is unique among all the digital camera’s I’ve owned is that the port for linking the camera to a PC is the same port for charging the lithium battery. I like that but I felt like copying from the camera to the PC took longer than normal. Also, cameras I’ve had in the past would turn on automatically when I linked it to a PC but I had to turn the FinePix on myself.

   To summarize this is a budget camera for people who want to take photos under optimal conditions. The daytime landscape shots looked very good but you can feel the cheapness of the camera the moment you take it out of the box. I’ll give it four stars because by and large you get what you pay for.
   Rating: 4 / 5
5. Jack W. Wolfe
   October 31, 2009 at 2:07 pm

   Well this is a great little digital camera. First the size is just right for us we took it on our last ride and took alot of pics and then took the card and put it in our printer and the shots turned out just great. It was easy to use it fit in my case I keep on my belt and when we needed it it worked great eveytime The battery life was good we charged it at night and took pics all day long.(maybe 40 or 50 pics in a day). the manuel was easy to read and eveything worked fine the self timer was very easy to use we used it alot it give you plenty of time to get set to take the picture. So over all I would say this was a GREAT little camera to take on our trip whan you go on a bike size does matter and this worked just fine!!! WORTH EVERY PENNY!! thank you!
   Rating: 5 / 5