Info on FinePix S3000 requested please

Im thinking about buying a fairly good digital camera, nothing too fancy, cant afford it and that im still very new to this.

Just something to hopefully use for wide field astrophotography, comet Neat coming etc. During the Superb Aurora last Oct-Nov my old Russian SLR broke so in need of a new one. I have seen this camera on sale in the US for $299 and in Argos for 329 euros. Can anybody vouch for it??

Ronan Newman

Galway Astronomy Club

Ronan, I'm seriously thimking of buying this as well, The best price i've seen it is €349, Here goes - I have the info sheet right in front of me--
3.2million pixels, 6x optical lens, 3.2x digital lens, focal length of 38-228mm, shutter speed of 1/4 to 1/1500 AUTO, 3 SECONDS NIGHT SCENE MANUAL!!!, movies of 30sec with no sound, settings of ISO 200-1600, Lithium ion battery. I'd love the S602 or S7000, but both are at €800, A manager where I work gave me a loan of his S5000 for a couple of nights, the shots are in the files section!!. As for the S3000, I don't know what the picture quality is like, I'd imagine it's good, but the 5000/7000/602 would be better. Still, it's all down to afford ability.
Check the fuji website at www.fujifilm.ie
Keith...

Just to give you a chance of looking at something else....

I recently did something similar, but after some basic research I bought a Minolta DiMAGE Z1, which is also a 3.2 megapixel camera, but has a 10x optical zoom, and most importantly can do a 30 second fully manual exposure, yep thirty whole seconds... enough to actually see tiny star trails I found. The price isn't bad either at £233 sterling from Amazon.co.uk
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000B.../202-1893995-5293406

Have Fun,
Jim.