There's a trend towards making digital cameras a bit less fragile, so they can be used for work as well as play. Fujifilm's Big Job HD-3W is aimed at construction workers, oil workers and engineers, as well as those who go potholing in their spare time.

It certainly looks the part, coming in around the size of a small digital SLR, even though it has a fixed lens and is a digital compact. It's quite light for its size, though, and can comfortably be used in one hand. It comes as standard with non-rechargeable alkaline batteries, so if you want to make the shift to rechargeables it'll cost extra.

The Big Job is claimed to have withstood a 0.7m drop test, though 0.7m is barely the height of a typical desk and less than the height of a trouser pocket. It's also been tested at up to 1m underwater for 30 minutes, so rain splashes and possibly snorkelling are the order here, rather than scuba diving. We captured a couple of goldfish shots from inside their tank without problem, though getting the water out of the Big Job's nooks and crannies took a while.

All the extra thought that's gone into its shock- and water-resistance has left a camera with a modest photographic specification. The CCD sensor has a resolution of six megapixels - nothing special in today's market - and the 28-84mm equivalent lens has a 3x optical zoom with 4.4x digital zoom to add to it; reasonable, but not outstanding.

Internal storage (there's no memory card supplied with the camera) runs to 27MB, so 19 shots in normal quality mode. Fujifilm includes a special CALS mode, taking pictures at 1,280 x 960 pixels, apparently ideal for posting on the Web.

There are only five preset shooting modes; portrait, landscape, sports, night and text, but this could be an advantage, since recent digital cameras sometimes have over 20, leading many people to use just auto. The Big Job uses TTL metering over 256 zones, but you have to train the picture on the admittedly large 76mm LCD display. While this is bright enough indoors, it's not easy to view in strong sunlight and may need shielding with a hand or third-party accessory.

Picture quality was variable. The camera doesn't resolve shots with wide contrasts of lighting well. Even when the auto-focus correctly outlined a small flower, for example, the surrounding foliage was correctly exposed while the petals themselves had their colours bleached. The auto-focus is effective, though, and the shooting modes, once you find them, are well tailored to their subjects.

Verdict
The ruggedness built into the Big Job HD-3W will no doubt be useful to those in Fujifilm's target industries. However, if you're thinking of buying one as an adjunct to outdoor leisure activities, you might be better off with a cheaper, higher spec compact camera and a separate, water- and shock-proof case. You pay quite a lot for the protection in this one. We're not too convinced by the ‘Big Job' model name, either.

Company: FujiFilm

Contact: 0870 084 1310

Tags: fujifilm liquid crystal display camera charge-coupled device fujifilm finepix digital single-lens reflex camera autofocus digital camera