Fujifilm FinePix S1500

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.

Fun fact: the electronic viewfinder is 0.2 inches diagonally.

LCD

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

The S1500's LCD looks huge on its small back.

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.

The S1500's flash is just like any other flash.

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.

The S1500 has a 12x zoom, but the lens itself doesn't extend particularly far.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs

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

This port cover is far larger than it needs to be.

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.

The cover takes up about half the surface area of the S1500's underside.

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.