Point, Click, Perfection (Fujifilm MX-1200)

Member Name: Gotcha

Product:	Fujifilm MX-1200
Date:	29/06/00 (790 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ease of use

Disadvantages: No case, smal Smatmedia Card supplied

My purchase of the Fuji MX1200 was purely an impulse buy. Luckily for me, it was a wise choice.

In the box I got:

Camera
Set of 4 AA batteries (very short lived these)
Wrist strap
2mb Smartmedia card
Serial cable
Camera drivers and software

Things I think should be included:
(these are things I had to buy separately)

A pouch for the camera
A larger Smartmedia card
Rechargable batteries
Smartcard reader

Despite being a basic camera, the MX1200 performs very well indeed. As mentioned, this was an impulse buy, but once I got home I did some research into the image quality and other people reviews of the product. The consenus seems to be that this is a little gem.

The camera gives 1.3mp resolution in a choice of two formats 640 480 or 1280 960 both of which can be BASIC, NORMAL or FINE - this relates to the compression applied to your images once stored on the smartmedia. My own preference is to use FINE compression at 1280 960 resolution, but users producing images for the web could get away with NORMAL at 640 480.

Image quality is terrific and from such a low cost, compact camera, quite surprising.

Whilst there are manual options to set shutter speed, flash, zoom etc. I have found that (probably because I am no David Bailey) the AUTO setting returns the best results.

The integral LCD is great for reviewing or framing pictures and the quality of the tiny screen is on par with TFT laptop screens.

The controls are logical and easy to get use to - I was up and running very quickly indeed.

Battery life is rated at around 300 shots per set of AA batteries, though in order to upload images to your PC the power must be on, so I would imagine that there is a trade off here.

My solution the anticipated battery costs was two-fold:

I bought two sets of NimH rechargeables from Maplin Electronics (£20 a set including charger).
><br>
I bought the Fuji "Flashpath" floppy adapter (£60) - I can now remove the smartcard from my camera, slot it into the adapter and read my images into any PC via the floppy drive. This solution is not only much much quicker than the supplied serial cable, but also does not require the camera to be powered up.

Only three things dissapointed me:

Small 2mb smartmedia card as standard
(I went out and bought a 32mb (£55) and can now take 50 FINE 1280 960 pictures at a time)

No case is supplied as standard
(I bought a cheapie from Jessops (3.99)

No lens cover is supplied
(this is ok so long as you have a case!)

All in all this is a very easy to use camera capable of producing high quality images - even if you are a novice like me!

Summary: