Fuji S2980 review - budget bridge camera

For those on a budget, but wanting a digital slr rather than a compact, there is one type of camera that feeds the need without breaking the bank - the bridge camera. A bridge camera is a camera that isn't a point and shoot compact you can fit in your pocket, but isn't a big expensive feature packed slr either. It bridges the gap between the two, hence the name.

The FujiFilm Finepix S2980 is the lowest priced bridge camera you can buy but don't let the price of around £100 fool you, this is no slouch. With an 18x optical zoom Fujinon lens, a set of impressive manual and automatic modes, an iso range of up to iso 6400 and an eye pleasing design (as you can see) the S2980 neither looks nor performs like a budget model.

It comes with four heavy duty AA batteries, a lens cap, shoulder strap and a software cd and, as well as a shorter more basic printed manual, there is a detailed manual included on the cd in pdf format (which new users are recommended to read).

Looks wise it looks like a dslr, it's easy to hold (not too big or bulky but not too small either) and the zoom control is located at the  front right of the camera in a position that makes it very easy to use and easy to find should you prefer using its electronic viewfinder to the rear mounted lcd display. The camera offers a decent collection of shooting modes from manual to automatic, including the excellent SP and Panorama modes which we'll get to in a moment. There are also a small number of manual settings you can adjust, such as focus aperture and iso, should you wish to try setting a scene up manually.

But while the manual options are great and help make you feel more like you're using a d-slr, it's in the automatic "point and shoot" modes that the Fuji really excels. Here you can concentrate on framing your subject the way you want and let the camera do all the hard work for you. Take SP mode for example. It features a wide selection of pre programmed shooting modes for everything from close up macro shots to sunsets and includes presets for filming in the dark, snapping fireworks or landscapes, portrait photography and much more.

Among the most impressive of these are the night time modes, in particular the tripod mode which will take a good picture even in very low light.

The picture of boats seen here moored at night in Cardiff Bay, Wales, was shot in the middle of the night and in very low light. As you can see the detail, despite the lack of available light, is impressive enough that boats can easily be seen illuminated only by the building lights.

If you want to take night time shots but don't have the budget for a hefty slr the Fuji is certainly one camera to consider buying, but while you can use one of the two night modes without a tripod and achieve good results you really will need to invest in a tripod to use the tripod night mode although a sturdy budget tripod can be bought for around twenty pounds with smaller ones available from seven pounds at stores such as Argos.

Back to other modes now, other than the multi faceted SP one, and in particular the panorama offering. Very easy to use this mode automatically stitches together three photographs to make one long landscape shot and does so with such ease that it almost feels like cheating as you simply point and click, move until a yellow cross sits inside a yellow circle, click again and repeat once more before pressing the ok button to store your resulting panorama.

That is unless you set panorama to manual mode where it gets a whole lot better. In manual mode you can zoom into a shot, take three photographs and have them stitched together. It's a little bit harder than when set to automatic because you have to manually line up each shot but the camera shows the right edge of the previous view which helps make it easier and, as with automatic mode, the stitching process is quite forgiving should you not align things as accurately as intended.


Here you can see a panorama of a bay, a good example of the cameras excellent stitching skills this was taken in automatic mode (and left unedited) yet despite the large expanse of sea filling the frame the Fuji managed to cope well and avoid any obvious signs that this is not a single image shot with a wide angle lens.

All the automated modes produce very impressive results and image contrast is good and sharp with decent colour saturation (though if like me you wish to change colour levels later on you can use free photo editing software such as the gimp to do so) .

Overall the camera is very good value for money and certainly the best bridge camera available for this price. The preset modes are so good that you can choose to skip manual settings entirely and focus on the more important aspects of your photographs such as the content and framing, freeing you to concentrate on the aesthetics of a shot rather than its mechanics.

It doesn’t support changing lenses but to be fair this isn’t a bad thing, if you’re on a budget you probably can’t afford to spend a lot on advanced lenses and filters or you likely wouldn’t be buying a budget bridge camera but rather a full blown dslr. This is the camera to consider if you are on a budget and want something easy to use but that will allow you to try out more advanced features as you get used to it.

Battery life on a set of 2300mah Energizer NiMH rechargeables is pretty good, around three or four days of shooting at about an hour a day. On Alkalines battery life is not so good, about half the duration of nimh batteries, so if you’re going to be taking a lot of pictures check out the Energizer rechargeable nimh batteries which you can buy in supermarkets for around ten pound as they come pre charged and don’t run down quickly unlike Alkaline batteries.

Lack of reviews and sample images may put people off buying this camera but hopefully this review will help some decide for or against the camera, and you can also see other photo’s taken with an S2980 in the S2980 area of the myfinepix website by clicking here.