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Fuji Zoom Date 1000

I actually bought this camera accidentally - I saw it and I thought it was the Fuji Silvi which is more sought after camera and have the same user interface. I bought it for £1 and when I returned home I realised my mistake. Ohh.. what the heck, it is just a pound so it stayed in the cupboard for some time, thinking most of the time to sell it. Eventually I forgot all about it and a month ago, as I was tidying up the closet I found it again. I thought to run a film through it and see how it performs.
Fuji's User interface. Big and easy to follow
The little Fuji comes from the distant 2002 and it was marketed as an upper class hi-end compact. It had a street price of £200 when new and Popular Photography reviewed it along with cameras such as the Minolta TC-1, the Contax T3 etc and gave it a 3.5 out of five. No bad at all actually. According to the magazine the lens performed very well to excellent with very low flare due to Fuji's EBC coating.  The pictures I got from this camera came out quite good actually, good contrast and very little -if nay - flare but not up to the same league as the fixed lens compacts I have reviewed in my blog. Better to use this compact between the 28mm and somewhere in the middle (around 50mm) - beyond that you can notice a drop in the quality. The lens is slow also, f5.6 at 28mm and reaching (I think) f/11 at 100mm - so it is not for low light photography. 

Fuji Zoom date 1000 vs. Olympus Super zoom 140s vs. Rollei Giro 70wa
 
But how does the Fuji compare with the other two -similarly feature packed - compact offerings from Olympus and Rollei? Actually, there is little to choose between them. All three cameras produce pretty much the same results so it is down to personal preference. The Fuji is smaller that the other two and has a nice aluminium body while the other two feel quite plastically. The Olympus focuses the fastest of the three and has a spot meter but it is at the same time the biggest of them all. My Rollei sample has been a bit temperamental, at times refusing to focus but I do have nice pictures from it and the lens has the best looking coating I've ever seen ! Out of the three, the Olympus is the quietest and the loudest is the Rollei which sounds like a blender each time it advances the film. 
Beautifully Coated lens !
Fuji vs. Olympus size
 
Conclusion
The Fuji Zoom date 1000 is a nice camera that can be found quite cheap on car boot sales. It produces nice results and it has an attractive aluminium finish. Don't pay more for a tenner to get it. There are other cameras flooding car boot sales that produce pretty similar results and cost less. If you decide to go ahead with buying it, stick to the wider end of the zoom range and you will be pleasantly surprised.

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