First off I'd like to point out that I am writing a consumer review on this camera. I know nothing about them really, I'm a point and clicker. I know how to take my memory card to a store and print photos and I know how to download them as for specs and the likes forget it really but I shall try to cover the important bits about this little gem if I can lol!

I received this camera from an ex partner about 6 years ago now. I so wanted my first digital camera but with not a lot of money about at the time it meant I was left wanting for ages but eventually he did get me this one as a Christmas present in Asda costing at the time a very reasonable £70.00ish pound, compared to other cameras at the time this was cheap even then lol!

However it didn't come with a case or usb cable or anything extra, it was just nicely boxed with instructions and a disc to pop into a computer if you wanted to.

Now this camera served me really very well indeed. Its outlasted many exes and friendships, been all over the place, been dropped and abused and captured many memories and so when the other day I picked it up and the usb cable wouldn't pick up to transfer my photos to my laptop and it kept turning itself on and off I was terribly distraught. I got looking in the Argos catalogue and my mind boggled at not only the prices but the megapixels, zooms etc and as I stated at the beginning of this review I simply want something not too fancy and easy to point and click.

However fate intervened1 My mate was in our local cash converters and spotted this very camera with a little black leather case supplied with it, second hand for £12.99 with a 6 month guarantee thrown in. Me being me I doubted she was right that it was still the A500 model so I nipped down and was delighted to find out it really was the same camera and so I bought it!

Ok so against many cameras you can now purchase nowadays this isn't the most modern one on offer. Its a shiny silver one and although small and square it is rather heavy. On the front of the camera we are told that it is Fujifilm Finepix and where the light is at the top of the camera and where the flash goes on and off we are told that this only contains 5.1 megapixels and that it is super ccd (not sure what that means at all!).

With cameras people put alot of emphasise on megapixels, the dots that make up the picture. The more pixels the better the picture and nowadays a 12 mega pixel camera is nothing out of the ordinary. For me though I do alot of my printing at home and through editing programmes I have uploaded on my computer I don't find that I lose picture quality at all. Maybe I would if I just simply printed stuff but I don't anyway!

So on the front of the camera you have the zoom lens. We are told that it is 3 x 6.4-19.2mm 1:3.3-5.5, from what I gather that means it zooms 3 times out lol. Sorry that means not alot to me apart from at the back of the camera I can zoom in and out at what I want to photograph! lol When I switch the camera on through touching the power on/off button at the top of it it automatically opens the black shutters on the lens and next to that there is simply a button to press that takes a photograph! On replacing batteries and on the main screen we are asked for date and time however that is optional.

Now to the other side of the camera is where you work from really. You have a small eye hole you can look through and take a picture though I never have and I use the big digital screen on the back of it which of course shows your view in colour. Then you have a 6 small buttons to play with. The main one for me is the one you can press to zoom in and out with, you also have a small button so you can go through images you have taken and delete them and so on and the button for that can also give you settings up for showing the date on your photos or not. You can also choose to set you camera to portrait mode, auto, manual, night mode and movie options though again I have never used this function I do know that it can take 60 seconds to 5 hours of live footage. Other functions on this include of course using flash, timer and things like that but like I keep mentioning to me I use this as a point and click, I use it mainly in auto mode, I have used portrait mode and do know how to pop the flash and date on and off my photos which is enough for me. Its a really easy to use camera this one and of course with a usb cable you can download your photographs to your computer or on more modern computers you can pop the memory card straight into your computer, again the method I use!

Now I do with this suggest you use a memory card as without them you get to take about 9 photographs before its own memory is full up. I have a card that takes about 300 photographs which is great though you can buy larger and smaller cards of course.

This takes two double a batteries and the one thing about this is that you do need really decent, somewhat expensive ones. I have tried Kodak batteries and allsorts but they are rubbish in this and the best to use are Duracell as it is heavy on battery power. It has auto shut off and all in all although this may not be the most fancy looking of cameras it is a flipping strong and sturdy one that for most of us none professionals has enough functions on it to keep us happy enough!

This review is also posted on Ciao under this same username.