electronics Finepix E500 Zoom opinions and reviews

Finepix E500 Zoom

Finepix E500 has a lot in common with the popular E550 with the exception of a few cutbacks like the lower (4-megapixel) CCD sensor and (3.2x) optical zoom lens. That said E500 holds an array of impressive features and produces good quality images.

Considering the dimensions of 101 x 60.5 x 32.6 mm, it is rather compact and weighs a portable 232 g even with the battery and memory card in place.

Producing maximum image size of 2304 x 1728 pixels, the camera has a range of 28-91mm (35mm equivalent) while the Aperture setting is between f/2.9 to f/8.

A Super Macro mode enables taking pictures from a closeness of 2.6 cm.

The autofocus arrangement performs excellently in bright light but disappoints in dim light conditions.

E500 features a 2.0-inch LCD along with an optical viewfinder for framing pictures. While the former displays almost the entire image, the latter disappoints exposing approximately 80% of the image.

The camera offers variety of exposure options like Auto, Program AE, Shutter Priority Aperture Priority and Manual modes.

Scene settings feature Portrait, Landscape, Sports, and Night Scene options. Shutter speeds in E500 are in the region of 1/2,000 to 2 seconds. Metering choices include Multi and Spot metering. Exposure Compensation is between -2 to +2 EV.

Further, you can exploit the White balance options like Outdoors, Shade, Daylight Fluorescent, Cool White Fluorescent, and Incandescent. ISO settings can be auto or adjusted manually between 80 - 400 ISO. Moreover, there are options for color and image sharpness.

Flash features include Auto, Red-Eye Reduction, Forced, Suppressed, Slow-Synchro etc. For taking self-portraits, there is a 2 or 10 second Self-Timer mode.

Movies with audio can be shot at 320 x 240-pixel resolution at 10 fps. Another option includes recording 30 second audio clips for still images.

File saving is done on the shipped 16MB xD-Picture Card which can hardly store 8 images. Of course, you can procure higher capacity cards.

A USB cable present allows you to upload images to your PC. Using the A/V cable, you can watch images on a TV in Playback mode.

E500 runs on 2 NiMH AA batteries. Battery life is rather moderate. With the LCD on, it won’t run for more than 90 minutes.

Being lightweight and very easy to use with a mixture of Auto and Manual modes, E500 can be equally well utilized by both the amateurs and professionals.