Full Review

Had this camera for a few days now, the one big disappointment is Micro-drive performance. If you've got an IBM 4GB Micro-drive, DO NOT buy this camera. It's supposed to support it, and in a way it does, but performance is terrible. Video is nigh on impossible, stopping after a few seconds with "BUSY", and when you try continuous modes, be prepared for a long wait for the pictures to be written to the card.
In use there are some curious settings; take the continuous mode. Want to use it in manual mode? No. Program Mode? No. Shutter priority? No. Aperture Priority? No. When can you use it?? Only in the "special" scene modes. Wheres the sense in that?
It creaks and groans in use, especially the continuous auto focus mode, although I do admit the auto focus performance is much better than my Canon S1 IS.
The EVF and the LCD are very grainy, and judging focus is hard if the light levels are low.
It's not all doom and gloom though, at least it has got manual focus!
Overall in use it doesn't feel like a £500 camera. My Canon feel much better put together with a much smoother performance, both in taking and viewing pictures.
What's the quality of the pictures like? So far, I've a few that have surprised me in how good they are, especially as there's been very poor light around here for the last few days.
Overall I'm disappointed so far, I'll see whats it's like with a fast compact flash card.
I've tested it now with a standard not so fast compact flash card and the performance is much improved. Take the last 4 option, with the micro-drive it would take approx. 35 seconds to save them before you could take any other pictures. With the flash card, it reduced to 12 seconds. Remember these are large 9M pictures. The camera feels completely refreshed when using the flash card. A fast one would no doubt improve it even further.
My main complaint is with Fuji, I asked them about micro-drive performance before I bought it and I was assured there was no problem. The micro-drive is not at fault, it works perfectly with my Canon S1IS.
16/10/05. After further testing, the micro-drive failed whilst in use in this camera. I don't know what to think, was the drive faulty before I put it in, even though it has worked faultlessly for 9 months in my Canon? Or did this camera kill it? Just half an hour before it finally died I tested the drive on my computer, copying some 55mb of pictures to and from it, without fault, so I have to suspect the camera has caused this failure.