Fuji Finepix A202

I have started off with a d-380 Olympus (really similar to C120) and I have bought my mint condition Fuji Finepix A202 off my brother for £45 and I find it good. The only thing is that my Olympus has better stuff on it like sepia and black and white. The only thing is it eats battery like me eating a McDonalds lol and it has good zoom. The Fuji has rubbish zoom and not so good sharpness but it can hold more photos, has more battery power and only has to batteries. It is also light, easy to use and is fashionable and light.

I WOULD GO FOR THE FUJI

Before I bought the A202 I was using Olympus C120. I choose the A202 because it was smaller and lighter and price was almost the same. My first surprise was very low sharpness of pictures comparing with C120. My second surprise was when I found out cheating about digital zoom (unfortunately too late, after 2 weeks). On low resolution digital zoom is as per specification 3x, on medium resolution it is only 1.5x and on high resolution there is no zoom. So, more or less this camera is without zoom if you use it usually at medium or high resolution. After 9 months somebody stole me this camera in metro (fortunately), so I had to buy a new one. I bought the Nikon C2100, price was only a little bit higher - about 15%. I was so surprised with this camera, quality of pictures is much, much better than of the A202, you cannot compare them. I recommend: Don't buy the A202, it is not worth money you pay for it.

I bought the Fuji Finepix A202 Digital camera based on price, simplicity to use and 2MB CCD. For straight forward photo's it produces very clear pictures and I've been very pleased with them. Although I've found them a bit flat in colour but maybe that is the UK light for you. The XD card can be cheaply upgraded and I use a 64MB which enables 159 photo's. I turn off the LCD and minimise flash use and get over 400 photo's from the batteries. I don't think the flash has a good range but then nor did my wetfilm camera flash. I don't fiddle about with the settings much, it allows manual exposure use. It also enables macro although I havn't used it. I found it is easy to move the settings to movie or macro without you being aware. I got a quite a lot of blurred photo's due to the macro being on but maybe most people would use the LCD and be aware. Uploading is a doddle, just plug in and away it goes with XP. I dropped my camera twice, the first time it appeared unaffected but after the second it gives me blurred photo's if there is a lot of sky in the picture. I havn't decided what to do about that yet. It's probably a bit dated now and I'd pay a bit more for my next one. Overall I've been very pleased.

As with Helen's review I compared the Olympus C-120 with the Fine Pix A202 digital camera and agree with a great deal of what she says. However, as someone who regularly authors "fool proof" manuals for complex systems I cannot agree on the ease of use comments. The Fine pix is an ideal camera for the technophobe. The manual is really very straight foward and the camera system is very intuative. I had never used a digi camera before picking up the A202 and was able to use it straight away but the C-120 I had to go to the manual.

Also the software loaded itself and recognised the camera when I plugged it in. I agree the Olympus has more fun stuff.

GET TO THE POINT. Absolute beginner - Fuji A202. Not afraid of a camera or technology - start with the C-120

Final point. The finepix uses an XD-picture card - which is the best memory format available at the moment (both Fuji & Olympus now use it as standard). The C-120 uses a smart media card which will eventually degrade and whilst slightly cheaper is not the best you can get.

Image quality is about the same between the two.

I am a teacher and very much a digital camera beginner. I am comparing the Olympus c120 and Fujifilm finepix a202 because they are both budget 2 megapixel cameras, easily available on the high street. I've used the Olympus with students and it's foolproof. It has a lot more features than the Fuji, but I'll leave that to the professionals and anoraks out there. The downside is that eats through batteries at locust rate and doesn't store many photos, which isn't ideal in a classroom setting. The Fuji is better in these respects, but it is difficult to use, the LCD screen is small and poor quality and the software is a nightmare. I much prefer the Camedia software offered with the Olympus, as it's quick to install, offers interesting effects and sample pix. The Fuji picture quality is good in daylight, but not so great in artificial light, and the macro setting produces blurred photos unless you are really close (the recommended distance is 8-13cm).