Digital Trends

Fuji FinePix E900 November 16th, 2005 | by David Elrich

Features and Design

The FinePix E900 feels great. The black-bodied digicam has a built-in grip that is very comfortable. The camera is studded with silvery metal accents, giving it a nice retro look and it's a pleasant change from the all-silver cases that are so prevalent in the 200-plus digital cameras available today. It weighs a light 9.2 ounces loaded with two AA batteries, xD Picture flash memory card and measures a compact 4 x 2.5 x 1.4 (WHD, in inches).

The camera has a 4x Fujinon lens with a 35mm equivalent range of 32-128mm, a good step above the usual 35-105mm point-and-shoot focal length. And for comparison Canon 4x zooms are rated 35-140mm. As an added bonus, the camera accepts optional wide-angle and telephoto accessory lenses by simply twisting off the ring surrounding the lens.

The front of the E900 is dominated by the lens that folds into the body when powered down; it has a built-in lens cover. There's also the viewfinder window, speaker, self-timer lamp, adapter ring release key and nice silver accents.  The top has the power button, shutter and mode dial and flash compartment. Unfortunately, the flash has to be manually opened instead of working automatically in very dark scenes but I guess Fuji wants you to use the Natural Light setting (more on this in a bit). And there's no accessory hot shoe.

The rear of the camera has no surprises: it does have a very accurate 2-inch LCD screen rated 115K pixels. You'll also find a tiny viewfinder to help when the screen wipes out in bright sunshine, a wide/tele toggle switch, the flash open button and four-way menu navigation ring with OK button. There are other keys for burst mode (up to a startling 40 shots at .6 fps), exposure compensation, playback and display. There's also one of my favorite Fujifilm features, Photo Mode, so you choose between Standard, B&W and Chrome levels of quality. I like playing with Chrome since it gives a vivid, saturated tone to photos but that's just me.

The right side of the E900 has a slot for the strap while the left has a relatively large speaker for movie playback and voice narration. There's also a panel with A/V, DC and USB connections; the plastic door seems a bit flimsy. The bottom has the battery/xD card compartment and tripod mount.

In the carton is an insulting 16MB xD card that holds a whole three 9MP Fine images and zero RAW files. Expect to pick up a 512MB edition for around $50 since it holds 113 3488 x 2616 pixel JPEG Fine images, 27 RAW or around 7 minutes of 640 x 480 pixel video clips at 30 fps. You'll also get a pair of rechargeable NiMH batteries with charger, cables, 136-page owner's manual, a handy Quick Start guide and software CD ROM with FinePix Viewer, driver and a RAW file converter that just opens the files. Alas, you'll need additional software to do any editing—and that's what RAW files are for. Why Fujifilm left this gaping hole is a mystery to me. Abode Photoshop CS2 should handle it although the E900 is not listed for RAW support (as of early November) but many other recent FinePix models are on the list.  

After charging the batteries, setting the date/time and loading a 512MB SanDisk card, it was time to take some photographs just to see if 9-megapixels are worth the investment.  

Image Courtesy of Fujifilm