Handling

The first contact with the Fuji S1500 gives a very good impression.  Obviously, we're a long way from the excellent finish quality of expert-level digital cameras, but the plastic is relatively high quality, and a special grippable material covers the handle.  The handle itself is particularly large, which means holding on to the S1500 is faultless, even for people with large hands.  And although there are some details that betray its 'low-cost' origins, like the rather insecure cover for the battery card slot (which also hides the memory card slot: be careful not to lose the batteries when you have to swap cards), the lens is solidly mounted without the slightest wobble.

The viewfinder is terrible, which is normal for this part of the market.  The screen hardly does any better: it's reasonably big with a decent resolution, and the display is fluid with the delay hardly noticeable, but the vertical viewing angles are extremely reduced.  It'll useless, then, to try and take a photo above a crowd.


The S1500 has a limited number of controls, but all of the essentials are there.  It's easy to choose between the PSAM modes, and the F menu gives direct access to the most important settings.  Scene recognition and face detection both work rather well, switching the camera on is fast and the autofocus is average.  But it's the delay when you take a photo that's problematic: once you've focused and fixed your settings, there's a gap of around half a second between the moment when you press down on the shutter release button and the photo actually being taken.

It's not hard to think, then, that this camera uses the same electronics as the Fujifilm J210, that we recently criticised for exactly the same thing ...

Image Quality

At low sensitivities, photos are entirely accurate--at the centre of the frame at least.  Around the outside, there's less sharpness, especially in wide-angle mode.  We noticed a very pronounced case of barrel distortion.  Nevertheless, prints at A4 will still be useable.


Moving up through the sensitivities, things get worse.  Fujifilm is a long way behind what Canon and Panasonic provide, for instance.  Here, even at 200 ISO, electronic noise is visible.  At 400 ISO, blurriness begins to take over, and at 800 ISO, noise is bad enough to ruin a print at 21 x 28 cm.  Purple marks blot out dark areas and it's best to avoid trying such high sensibilities.

Happily, though, to make up for this, the image stabilisation is pretty effective.  Our Barbie portrait shot was sharp and clear at around 1/6 s.  You won't necessarily need to resort to higher sensibilities then.


We won't spend long on the video mode.  Although the zoom is active, that's the only good thing about it.  The image quality is mediocre, the sound dreadful, and you can hear the zoom and focusing taking place all too clearly.