Fujifilm MX-500

The Fujifilm MX-500 has a rather plain, hefty-looking silver case. The Fujinon lens and viewfinder are protected by a spring-loaded sliding cover, but the viewfinder eyepiece is awkwardly positioned in the extreme top left corner. This gives the camera an unbalanced feel in use and a carelessly placed finger could easily obscure the shot. A built-in flash takes up the central position on the front fascia.

A line of controls at the rear of the MX-500 is positioned within easy reach of the thumb. A rotary dial allows eight functions to be selected, including configuration setup, self-timer, manual mode and view mode. Adjustment settings allow the image file resolution to be switched from 640 x 480 to 1,280 x 1,024 pixels. The quality mode can be set to either basic, normal or fine. The modes correspond to increasing compression ratios as the picture becomes finer. In normal mode a 640 x 480 image takes up 85Kb, and 1,280 x 1,024 requires 330Kb.

In normal mode, 22 pictures at a resolution of 640 x 480, or five at 1,280 x 1,024, can be captured on the 2Mb SmartMedia card supplied. In fine mode this quantity drops to 12 and two respectively. SmartMedia cards are available in 4Mb, 8Mb and 16Mb formats to allow greater storage capacity. Both SmartMedia 3.3V or 5V can be used.

The colour LCD viewer on the back of the camera measures 35 x 26mm. The display area is small but the image can be zoomed for closer scrutiny. More importantly, information on camera settings can be viewed to check the optimum configuration is applied. Alternatively, there are settings for PC mode where images can be transferred onto your computer. The software and cables come in the box and feature Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2, S-Video and composite TV-out and serial connection leads. Downloaded images can be viewed, manipulated and printed using PhotoDeluxe 2. You can even remove defects such as red-eye or compensate for poor lighting.

The MX-500 test pictures exhibited faithful colour reproduction in both internal and external settings. The detail and colour rendition of the bowl of fruit were particularly impressive, with only the Olympus and Agfa doing better.

The Fujifilm MX-500 is a decent camera at a fair price. It isn't as well built or as pretty as its big brother the MX-700, but it's worth a look if you want a basic digital camera with good image quality.