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  • Product Tour

  • Hardware

  • Design & Layout

  • Modes

  • Controls

  • Conclusion

  • Product Tour
  • Hardware
  • Design & Layout
  • Modes
  • Controls
  • Conclusion

Product Tour


The Fujifilm S1500 looks like the DSLR version of a puppy. It's small overall, but has a few relatively large features. It roughly measures 4 inches wide, 2.9 inches high, and 2.7 inches deep. This is probably too thick to fit in a pocket comfortably, but doing so wouldn't be impossible. It weighs 11.4 ounces, which is twice what the average point-and-shoot weighs. The Fujifilm S1500 is definitely smaller than the DSLRs it borrows its aesthetics from, but it isn't as small as most portable cameras.

Front


The front of the S1500 mainly consists of the grip and the lens. At the top of the grip you can see the side of the zoom toggle. Just above the valley between the grip and the lens is the auto-focus assist lamp; above that is the side of the control dial. To the right of the Fujifilm branding is the flash button.

 

Back


Like most modern cameras, the major feature on the S1500's back is its LCD display. Above it is the viewfinder, which also uses an LCD. The right side has a bunch of controls. The button above the d-pad array switches between the LCD and electronic viewfinder. The top left button opens playback mode, the top right button opens up a quick menu, the bottom left button is the back button, and the bottom right button opens up exposure compensation.

Sides


The left side of the S1500 has a better view of the flash button, information about the camera's zoom and a hint as to whether or not it has image stabilization, and a set of speakers at the bottom.

The right side really only has one feature, the micro USB port.

Top


The top of the camera has the flash, control dial, on/off switch and a corresponding LED, a facial recognition shortcut, a stabilization shortcut, and the zoom toggle.

Bottom


There are two features on the bottom of the device: the memory card/battery cavity and a tripod socket.

 

Hardware

Viewfinder


The S1500 uses an electronic viewfinder. It uses a 200,000 dot FLCD monitor. The display seems to have a somewhat slow refresh rate, which gave its live preview a somewhat jerky quality.  In fact, the live preview on the EVF seems a bit worse than on its LCD.

 

LCD


The main LCD display is 2.7 inches, diagonally. It contains 230,000 pixels total and uses a TFT LCD.

Flash


Like most SLR-style compact cameras, the S1500 wears its flash on top. Pressing the button located just below it will cause it to pop up.

Lens


The S1500 has a 12x optical zoom, which is a good range. You can get 10x zoom cameras that are smaller, or get up to 24x zoom cameras that are slightly larger. For this size and price, however, 12x zoom is impressive.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs


The S1500 has a single port: a Micro USB port on its right side.

Battery


The S1500 keeps its batteries and memory card in a small cavity on its underbelly. Since there really isn't enough space to fit two battery slots side by side, Fujifilm had to zig-zag them, which is an interesting design.

Memory


As you might have deduced from the above picture, the memory card slot is located by the batteries. The camera can take xD-Picture Cards, up to 2 GB, or SD cards (supports SDHC). The S1500 also has about 23MB of internal memory.

 

Design & Layout

Design & Appearance


The S1500 has the design of a DSLR and the appearance of a teeny tiny DSLR. The camera itself is mainly grip and lens. It looks cute, if only because smaller versions of things are inherently cuter. Its design is much simpler than a DSLR, if only in regards to the number of physical controls dotting its surface. Since the S1500 mimics drab DSLRs, don't expect it to come in festive colors.

Size & Handling


The S1500 is relatively small compared to DSLRs, but pretty big compared to the average point-and-shoot. The grip is big enough so your hand won't feel cramped while you hold it. It's easy to reach all the controls on top of the device without shifting your grip, but the d-pad is located a bit low on the back.

Overall, the S1500 handles much better than a DSLR due to its smaller size, and actually feels a bit better in the hand than a point-and-shoot because of its sizable grip.

Menu


The S1500's menu changes dynamically (read: cuts options) depending on what shooting mode you're in. Menu navigation is simple: you use up and down to scroll through, and right will bring up a sub-menu. There isn't an easy way to scroll quickly or page down, which is a bit annoying. In general, however, the menu isn't remarkably different from any other menu.

Ease of Use


The S1500 occupies the relatively new, somewhat nebulous 'tween' space between point-and-shoots and DSLRs. It's decidedly closer to a point-and-shoot, however, which might make it a good first stepping stone away from a vanilla point-and-shoot.

Modes

Auto Mode


The S1500 has a handful of automatic features to help users. The new addition to this series is automatic scene mode, which will automatically detect your shooting conditions and apply one of six different scene modes. This will adjust exposure, white balance and ISO accordingly. This mode is nothing new, but the S1500's predecessor did not have it. It also has facial detection and an automatic red eye removal tool.

Movie Mode


The movie mode on the S1500 captures VGA quality (640x480) clips at 30 frames per second. You can also opt to record in 432x240. Both formats will record audio.

 
Drive/Burst Mode


There are a few burst modes on the S1500. The top-3 and last-3 modes capture at 1.4 frames/second. There's a continuous burst mode that captures at the same rate. Top-6 mode will capture images 5 Megapixels or lower at 3.3 frames per second. Top-15 mode can get 7.5 frames per second with a 2-Megapixel cap.

Playback Mode


There are a handful of playback modes. There's a slide show function, facial detection mode with red eye removal, a cropping tool, image rotation, and voice memos. Overall, the S1500 covers the basics.

Custom Image Presets


There are 14 scene modes to choose from on the S1500: portrait, landscape, sport, night, night on a tripod, natural light, fireworks, sunset, snow, beach, museum, party, flower, and text. The camera also comes with automatic scene recognition mode, which will choose

 

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Controls

Manual Controls


The S1500 has a good array of manual controls. You can adjust your ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. The latter two are unommon. It has 256-zone metering. You can also set a custom white balance. On the manual control setting, up and down sets the shutter speed and left and right adjust the aperture.

Focus


The S1500 does not have manual focus. Its autofocus can be set to area, multi, center, tracking, or continuous. 

ISO


The ISO settings on the S1500 go up to 6400. For the 3200 and 6400 settings, however, the pictures drop to 3 Megapixels. 

White Balance


There are options for both custom or preset white balance. The presets are fine, shade, fluorescent (daylight, warm white, cool white),  and incandescent.

Metering


The S1500 has 256-zone metering. You can set the camera to multi, spot, or average.

Shutter Speed


The shutter speed ranges from 1/4 seconds to 1/2000 seconds in auto mode. In any non-auto mode, the range opens up to 8-1/2000 seconds. There is both a shutter priority and a manual mode.

Aperture


The aperture range is F2.8 - F6.4 for wide. If you're using a telephoto, the F-stops change from 5-8. Each increment is 1/3 EV. In addition to the manual settings, the S1500 has an aperture priority mode. 

Image Stabilization


The S1500 has dual image stabilization. This means it has both optical (a mechanical sensor) and digital stabilization (software-based stabilization). This tag team of anti-shake should increase the overall sharpness of your pictures.

Picture Quality & Size Options


Your images can come in 3648×2736, 3648×2432 (3:2 format),  2592 x 1944,  2048 x1536, 1600 x 1200, and 640 x 480 pixels.                                               

Picture Effects


There are just two picture effects to chose from: chrome and black & white.

Conclusion

Meet the tester

Mark Brezinski

Mark Brezinski

Senior Writer

@markbrezinski

Mark Brezinski works on the Home Team, reviewing refrigerators, minifridges, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, air conditioners, air purifiers, and fans.

See all of Mark Brezinski's reviews

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