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The unit is 7x6x2cm and weights only around 150grams. This is a 4.1million effective pixel camera giving a maximum resolution of 2304x1728. It has 3.4 optical zoom and can take 320x240 movies at 10 frames a second with sound.

As with most modern digital cameras you could take the provided XD card from the unit and transfer your images via a card reader. However the more conventional way is to use the provided software and a USB lead to the supplied camera dock.

Installation of the software is reasonable and should take around 450MB of hard disc space. If you do not already have a favourite software program for manipulation images the provided Fine Pix software should be adequate.

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Fuji have their own way of turning a camera on with a slider on the front of the unit. Other than that all the controls apart from the shutter - top - are on the rear of it. This is dominated by a 4x3cm TFT screen that works well in all but strong sunlight where you need to shade it. You can frame and take images by using either the TFT or the viewfinder. Unlike some other cameras both can used at once without adjustments. So some images can be captured using the TFT and some via the viewfinder.

The whole unit is controlled by only five buttons, a three position slider and an up/down rocker. The illustrations on them should be obvious but if not the 100 page owners guide covers everything.

I liked the 'F' button that changes the resolution efficiently and quickly, no delving two of three menus deep as with some cameras. In the top resolution 2304x1728 there are two compression modes fine and normal in the other three resolutions 1600x1200, 1280x960 and 640x480 there is just one compression method available. Fuji only provide a 16MB XD card with others providing 32MB or even 64MB this seems a little ungenerous. The likely images you could take are 7, 15, 25, 33 or 122 if you took everything at one size however using the 'F' button it gives it's best guess of the number of images remaining available to be taken at any of the sizes you select.

There are two sizes in movie mode 320x240 and 160x120 in the better mode you would be able to take around a minute on the 16MB card and up to 3 minutes in the lesser size. I am not a fan of movies taken with digital cameras but this was simple and straightforward, a read of a couple of pages of the owners guide should answer any questions. If a camcorder is not available for short sequences this is a reasonable option. However with memory cards being much cheaper these days buy a larger one.

In still image mode during the test period I found some sunny days and all those images I was more than happy with. For flash use I found images taken at more than three metres appeared a little dark, in good light you often got better results by turning the flash off providing you have a steady hand. The price is £162.15 at Dabs.

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