Fuji is adding to its popular J-series the FinePix J38 digital camera. So, if you have more of a restricted budget, but don't want to sacrifice quality or style, you should give it a try. Being only 20mm thick, it's a perfect on-the-go companion, easy fitting in a shirt pocket or waist bag. Even with such a small casing, the FinePix J38 sports a 12-megapixel CCD with a 3x Fujinon optical zoom lens and a bright 2.7" high resolution LCD for tack sharp clear image reviewing.

"It's important to offer an affordable digital camera without compromising performance or style," said David Troy, marketing manager, Consumer Digital Cameras, Electronic Imaging Division, FUJIFILM U.S.A., Inc. "With an overwhelming consumer response to the initial J-series cameras, we wanted to give our customers even better features for the same low prices."

Because it is meant for vacations, just in case you had one drink too many, you can always use the SR auto mode, that's short for automatic scene recognition. With this mode selected, you give up everything but picture quality. The camera will automatically optimize for ideal exposure, focus, white balance and ISO and even engage face detection and picture stabilization according to the light level and scene type.

Panoramic shooting mode makes for easy, in-camera, photo stitching of up to three consecutive shots, resulting in one large landscape for you to keep. Low light is a tad problematic for this little fellow, but if you don't need the full high resolution, it will still capture amazing images. In order to do so, the camera drops the resolution down to 3MP and raises the ISO up to 3200. We all know that proprietary batteries last longer than rechargeable AAs; therefore, the FinePix J38 sports a Li-ion battery for extended life-span taking pictures.

If this sounds good for you, do mind that you'll be able to use it only during a late vacation, since availability starts by the end of August, with a retail price of $129.95.


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