By Jon Dickinson

The Fujifilm Finepix E900 was announced in 2005 and is no longer in production - I picked mine up from Ebay for the princely sum of 50GBP, which is a bargain in my opinion. The E900 is the last pocketable RAW-shooting camera Fuji made - and it's not a bad little mover.



Tech stuff: 32-128mm EFOV, f2.8 at the wide end, f5.6 at the long end. PSAM, full Auto and some scene modes. Runs on a pair of AA batteries, I've had about 350 to 400 shots (no flash) from a full charge. Flash is a bit feeble and wayward, requiring turning down (which you can do, fortunately) at close range, and not doing much at all further away. Sensor is 1/1.6", 9MP, and delivers a decent JPEG or RAW if you like. You can get full tech details at various sites out there if you want something specific.





The main goodies, from my point of view are:

Good hand grip
Not too small sensor
Good JPEG output
Does RAW too
Dedicated buttons for drive mode and exposure compensation




On the mild annoyance side of things, it takes a good six seconds or so to put a RAW away to the xD card, and they're fairly long seconds too. Might even be over seven actual seconds if I were to time it. JPEGs take just under two seconds to put away, which isn't so bad. Flash is a bit rubbish (see above) but that's not part of my method of working 99% of the time. Oh, and it takes xD cards only, which means a maximum of 2GB per card; so I've got a few in my case for when I get RAW and run out - 107 RAWs on a 2GB card, or 457 JPEGs, you choose.



I haven't had enough time to evaluate different RAW developer packages as that's a new area to me, and not really within the remit of this write-up - however, I have had a week's holiday in the Isle of Wight and took about 2200 JPEGs during this time. The good news is, the JPEGs from the E900 are good and sturdy - straight from the camera on 9M Fine setting, 'Chrome' colour setting (Fuji's version of 'Vivid' on other manufacturer's cameras) and Standard sharpness, they're good for a bit of Levels adjustment, a little USM and done. For Black & White, I tend to Channel Mix and then play with Curves to get things the way I like, and then just some sharpening. Here are a few more samples from this first shooting spree:









Just a footnote - I'm using GIMP for all the PP work on my photographs, version 2.4 is very stable and very versatile, and also free.

So, to round up, the E900 is a pretty class act in that as a used buy today it offers a combination of features currently unavailable on any similarly sized new camera under about 250GBP. Necessity is often the mother of invention, and being skint has turned me down a vey interesting and rewarding path in my photography. Thanks Fuji!

Cheers
JD

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JD posted the above as a Hall of Fame entry in our Discussion area, and I'm reposting it here with his permission. Readers looking for a seriously capable compact on a budget will certainly want to consider the E900. -Amin
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