My 3800 Rocks

Author's Rating:

Pros: Uses AA batteries! Feels great in your hands. Good pictures.

Cons: Lens cap keeps falling off.

The Bottom Line: 
Get the Fuji Finepix 3800 before the price goes up anymore (it's a-risin, yes it is). You won't be sorry.

Author's Review
This is my first digital camera, but I've owned SEVERAL camcorders and they all sucked monkey turds. Know why? Cause of the stinkin proprietary battery designs. You have to use a special battery, charge it in a special charger, and make sure the battery is always charged so it's ready when you need it. Give me a freekin break! Most of the time the battery's stone cold dead and the camcorder/camera stays home, keeping your hats and mittens company in the closet.

This camera uses standard AAs. On the way to little Billy's B'day party? Batteries dead? No problemo, just stop at the corner Quickimart and pick up a pack. Now that's the way it should be. EVERY CAMERA OUGHT TO WORK THIS WAY. DON'T BUY ONE THAT DOESN'T. DON'T YOU DO IT!

Now you don't want to have to constantly buy new batteries soooo ... buy rechargeables. I bought a charger and a couple packs of NIMH AA batteries (the only rechargeables this camera uses) at the local radio shack and now I'm never without charged batteries. The batteries last for weeks of intermittent use and hold their charge for at least a couple months in the drawer.

This one feature makes this camera so much more useful than most on the market.

Now the 16MB memory chip that comes with this camera is inadequate. Get a 128 MB card pronto. You can take almost 100 pictures in the highest resolution mode with the 128, and unless you're just takin pics of the beanie babies you're selling on E-bay, why would you take important family pics in any lower resolution than the best? I've transferred people's home movies to video for a living for almost 20 years. Believe me this stuff gets important as the decades go by, you want to take the highest quality pics you can. You can always resize them down for the web or email or whatever, BUT YOU CAN'T GO UP.

So anyways, get a big card and don't get ripped off, memory prices vary. If you just walk into the local electronics joint you'll pay too much. Go to www.pricewatch.com and search for XD memory chips. I paid about sixty bucks for my 128MB chip. The XD chip this camera uses is amazing, it's about the size of a postage stamp. XD memory chips are the newest technology, I wouldn't buy a camera with one of the older, larger memory chips. The chip is a breeze to install in this camera. Open the little door, press the old one and it pops out, pop the new one in and close the door. That's it. Nuff said.

I don't use the photo software that came with the camera so I can't say much about it except it appeared to suck. I think you have to install it in order to get the necessary drivers on your computer, but after that you just hook it up to the USB port on your computer, turn it to play mode, and whala! Windows explorer sees your memory chip as another drive and you can transfer the files off the camera to whatever folder you want them in.

If you don't understand what I just said than you might need to use the software that comes with the camera.

I transfer the files into an image editing program, I like microsoft image composer, then rename em (straight off the camera they have funny names like - dcs1001) and then make smaller versions of the photos if I need em for e-mail.

The point is the 3800 easily transfers your pics to your computer then the sky's the limit on what you can do with them.

The 3800 takes great pics, has a great zoom, and it's easy to use. Most of the newer digital cameras can say that (except the zoom part maybe). All the blah, blah, blah about the difference in image quality is mostly just blowin smoke (unless you're a pro). I think you should buy a camera cause of the features, the quality of the construction, the ease of use ... and oh yeah, how cool it looks. IMHO this camera not only scores on the first three points, it's the coolest looking camera out there.