Fujifilm Finepix F31fd 6.3MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

By no means am I an expert at cameras or photography. I am a mom. And I love to take pictures of my family. And when I finally get that perfect shot -- when my kid finally looks at the camera and smiles perfectly when they're in the middle of swinging through the air or jumping on the bed -- I want that photo to last forever. But several cameras failed me and on pretty important occasions.

Not so, the FinePix F31fd. Most cameras perform well when there's plenty of sunshine or perfect lighting. But other (expensive) digital cameras that I was using kept coming up with really grainy photos whenever I took pictures indoors. (I had zero photos from my law school graduation as a result.) There was no excuse for that. But all the reviews about the FinePixF31fd being the king of low light -- all that is true. I consistently get clear, unblurred and NOT grainy photographs, no matter whether I take them indoors, outdoors, at noon or at dusk. I'm a casual photographer -- I don't play with the settings on my camera, nor would I know what I was doing if I did. I just put it on auto focus, point, and click! And I have months and months of wonderful photos of my little girl's toddler years which are crystal clear.

My major complaint though, is that I wanted a device which would take fantastic digital photos as well as good movie clips. When you're stocking a huge diaper bag, you don't also need to haul both a camcorder and a digital camera along. Besides, the Finepix is small enough to always carry in your purse so that you always have it on hand to catch life's unexpected moments on film. That's what I like about it. But I wish that the movie capabilities were better. You can zoom in/out and take the movie, but once the movie mode is recording, you can no longer zoom in and out. But the BIGGEST complaint I have is that the sound quality is awful -- even the loudest sounds get recorded at a muffle. Quiet sounds are left off the video altogether. (Sad for me, I was never quite able to get my baby cooing or babbling on tape.) If Fuji had worked a little bit longer on the microphone on this guy, it would be the perfect device for me!

The Fujifilm SuperCCD sensor in the F31fd (and other Fujifilm cameras) is unique. No other manufacturer has them. What is great about the SuperCCD sensor is it's ability to take great photos in low light situations WITHOUT the use of a flash. The high ISO photos the F31fd produces are a quantum leap ahead of the competition. Other cameras will produce noisy and virtually unusable photos at ISO above 800, not so with the F31fd. You won't find low light performance in other manufacturer's cameras until you start shelling out big bucks for a digital SLR. If you find yourself in situations where using the flash is not an option, the Fujifilm F31fd is your only answer.

AFter 2 weeks of research (Fuji Finepix, Sony Cybershots & Canon models) I chose the F31fd based on all of the excellent reviews & it's plethora of features. Was nearly impossible to find one of these brand-new but there are occasionaly a few on Ebay for under $500.

First impression of the F31fd: Much smaller than I thought. Very well put together, buttons and dials very convenient. Access to features and menus is logical and usually within 2 button clicks. The video quality is breathtaking at 30fps, similar to my camcorder. I've taken hundreds of photos using all of the features and their quality has FAR exceeded my high expectations based on the A310.

Three straight days of picture, movie, playback, and "playing" with the features, and the battery indicator is still two out of three bars. Fuji says 580 shots per charge. I believe it. One really neat feature is that you can still take a picture when you are in playback mode (which is conveniently accessed by pushing one button). The shutter is nearly instantaneous too.

I've recommended this camera to family and friends. WHY can't we find these still in stores? This is in my opinion the best under $500 camera on the market! Good luck...buy it if you find it.

We had a Nikon Coolpix before, but just got tired of the slow reaction times and the poor indoor pictures. So we decided to get a camera that was: (a) great for indoor and low-light shots, and (b) had a fast reaction time.

This camera is terrific in those areas. I've taken shots with the lights off and been fairly impressed with them. My eyes are still better than the camera, and I imagine a digital SLR would be better, but this is still miles ahead of where I'm used to being.

The speed is wonderful, I can take pictures almost as fast as I can push the button. I'm used to a 1+ second lag for it to focus, and with little kids they never smile that long! This camera is quite fast, so we love that aspect of it too.

But even better, the battery seems to last forever. Way better than the coolpix and olympus cameras I've seen. dpreview.com has more info on it.

It's a 6 MP camera, which I thought was good because my hard drive isn't big enough to store many 10+ MP shots. A nice balance of filesize and quality.

The only downside is that I've had trouble with the 2GB card I bought, it gets corrupted and hangs when I'm uploading pictures to my computer. Still not sure if it's the camera misformatting the data, the card is faulty, or the card reader is dying.

Otherwise, a wonderful purchase for someone wanting to get better than compact-quality without spending $700+ to do it.

This camera gets photos in very low light, nothing this small comes close to this low light performance.