Before reading this review and jumping into conclusion too quickly we STRONGLY advise you to read this news we posted after Meeting Fujifilm in Japan regarding the review below, it will give you a better understanding on why we were disappointed

I feel very bad for Fujifilm, no really coz there’s NO WAY on Earth I can say anything good about this camera despite its appearance… But let’s try shall we? I had the camera to play with for a week, and I returned it to Fujifilm today… And Lord I’m disappointed… Anyway let’s try to write a review on the W1 (somehow).

Fujifilm W1 Specs
- 10.0 million pixels
- 1/2.3-inch CCD x2 sensor
- MPO+JPEG, MPO (Multi Picture Format compatible)
- 3D-AVI (Stereo AVI format with 2 image channels)
- 2D AVI format (Motion JPEG with sound)
- Auto / Equivalent to 100 / 200 / 400 / 800 / 1600 (Standard Output Sensitivity)
- Internal memory (Approx. 42MB) and SD/SDHC Memory Card

First Impression
The W1’s design and construction is by far the most impressive thing about it, I mean, I kind of like it. It’s well done, with a nice feel, well built, sturdy, nothing much to complain about here.

However once you push the shutter button things get bit different. The W1’s GUI looks rough and is difficult to understand. I struggled for hours to understand how to set the ISO and I had to read the user’s manual (lame). The various menu buttons are badly designed, don’t make sense and give bad responses. Navigating the UI is like being back in the year 1999.

Let’s Shoot Baby
I believe we can all adapt ourselves somehow to a badly designed UI and weird buttons, but what about the picture quality and this 3D thingy?

Well first of all you have to understand how this 3D stuff works. Fujifilm glued two camera sensors on each side of the camera to give you this 3D thingy… A bit like is doing RED, or Panasonic’s 3D HD Video camera, but with less success than both RED and Panasonic, granted both above mentioned video cameras cost an arm and a leg.

Once you power the camera up you have to struggle with two things. First you’ll need a big pile of aspirin ready for the incredible headaches you’ll get when using the 3D view finder… It may be only me, but after using the camera a few minutes my eyes began hurting like hell and I got a horrible headache. You’d better set the camera in 2D mode if you expect to play with the camera settings before shooting in 3D…

The other problem with this 3D camera is there’s no way for you to see 3D results on a computer. This looks stupid, but 3D photos have an .MPO file extension, and I don’t have software capable of reading these files or a hardware solution for that (TV, FRAME and so on)… Unless you have a Fujifilm 3D Photoframe or something capable of reading and displaying .MPO files, the W1 is pretty much useless…

Fortunately for us, the camera in 3D mode shoots both JPEG files and MPOs at the same time so at least you can feed your PC with your W1’s SD card and see how ugly your photos look.

Due to the low ambient brightness surrounding me during our test, the lowest ISO setting I could get from the camera in auto was 400, while in Full Manual Mode I could set the camera to ISO 100 but had to put it on a tripod…

When I pressed the shutter, check the quality on the W1 display, fired-up PhotoShop CS3 and just cried… See for yourself… I cried like a baby and then had a good laugh.

3D Photo Sample

Video Mode
Believe it or not there’s ALSO a video mode… my comments will be simple… LOL

What appears to be a 3D video, camera set on Video Mode, 3D Mode auto…

Conclusion
To be VERY VERY VERY Honest, I feel pretty bad… I feel bad for the Fujifilm engineers and staff who worked on the W1… There’s no word other than crap that comes to my mind when describing it, maybe I got it wrong from the beginning, maybe I was expecting too much, but I can’t recommend the W1 to anyone… Seriously… What did Fujiflim expect? I really want to know.

If by luck you have a W1 and are happy with it, please don’t hesitate to contact us so we can share your experiences and update this review.

That said after this review I’m not sure if Fujifilm will EVER loan us another product to test …