Fujifilm's 1998 slimline digicam — 1.5MP CCD, fixed f/3.2 Fujinon, SmartMedia; sold as FinePix 500 in Japan
The Fujifilm MX-500 was a compact digital camera announced in May 1998 and shown at Photokina that year. It was sold in Japan as the FinePix 500 and as the MX-500 elsewhere. Despite the lower model number it arrived after the MX-700 and acted as its successor in Fujifilm's early MX line of megapixel-class compacts.
It used a 1.5-megapixel 1/2-inch CCD producing images up to 1280x1024 pixels, paired with a fixed Fujinon lens (f=7.6mm) with an f/3.2 maximum aperture. Autofocus included a macro mode, white balance could be set automatically or manually, and shutter speeds ran from 1/4 to 1/1000 second. Images were stored on SmartMedia cards and reviewed on a 1.8-inch LCD.
As a fixed-lens, mostly automatic compact it suits collectors of first-generation consumer digicams and anyone after the low-resolution, CCD-era look. Output is small by modern standards, so it is a novelty and experimentation camera rather than a practical everyday shooter.
SmartMedia cards are long discontinued, so a working card and a reader are the first things to confirm; early cameras also reject larger card capacities. Check that the LCD is free of bleed, that the battery compartment shows no corrosion, and that images write without card errors.