• When shooting a landscape, buildings, or anything else with some sky in it, choose Landscape, even when the landscape is only the backdrop for a shot of your significant other. This makes sure the sky is correctly exposed. ISO is limited to 800. If the shadows turn out too dark, you can PP them easier than blown highlights.
• After dawn, and before dusk, use SP(Sunset) instead of Landscape (even when you aren't shooting a sunset). This improves colors, allows fill-in flash, and ISO up to 1600. Finally, if you feel Auto-ISO 1600 is too much, choose SP(Night) and use a tripod.
• Whenever applicable, use Snow/Beach scene modes: SP(Snow) (Auto-ISO 100-800), SP(Beach) (Auto-ISO 100-200).
• If you don't know if you will be needing Macro or Super-Macro, try SP(Flower).

• To judge the exposure with the LCD, set brightness to -2, and look at the LCD from straight above. When the viewing angle is slightly off center (esp. in vertical direction), the contrast will change almost immediately, and you are likely to misjudge.
• After adjusting LCD brightness down, compare some shots with the computer monitor versions of the same pictures so you get a better idea of the exposure (under/over) of a photo as it appears on the LCD. Even at -2 brightness on LCD, I thought photos looked more underexposed when viewed on a calibrated PC monitor than on the LCD. It would be a good idea to get a print for comparison against the LCD & monitor also.

• Watch your flash selection. Things like slow sync flash will change your results. Flash settings are saved separately at the different positions on the mode dial.
• The flash ranges you see in Fuji's specs are for the ISO 1600 setting.
• ISO 100 flash range is about 2.1m (6.8ft) at wide angle, and 1.15m (3.8ft) at telephoto (because the lens is more than one F-Stop slower at telephoto). Of course, this is calculated without allowing for ambient light. The range doubles when you increase ISO by two full stops.
• ISO 100 Shots may be underexposed, or you may end up with a slow shutter speed. I did some 1/15s flash shots were the background was showing traces of camera shake. Watch out for the camera shake warning.
• In P mode, it appears that the minimum shutter speed is 1/45th sec when flash is enabled, and it goes up with a greater focal length. Since the actual flash duration is so short, a longer shutter duration doesn't help the light from the flash expose the shot, and is only good for mixing in ambient light, which can help on the overall exposure depending on the amount of ambient light & ISO setting. It takes quite a bit of ambient light to help on flash shots at low ISOs at rule-of-thumb shutter speeds (1/focal-length). Fuji's auto ISO of course likes to use higher ISOs and mix more ambient light in at the expense of more noise. Sometimes it's a fair tradeoff.
  
  To elaborate a bit more on that, when I say flash duration is "short", I'm talking sometimes being faster than 1/10,000th of a second. So using a slow shutter (slower than 1/45 sec for example) only allows additional ambient light to expose the CCD, and it doesn't help at all for the exposure of the flash itself.
  
  Secondly, if the shutter speed were to get slower than 1/45th sec as your focal length increased, this would be a problem with blurring noticable due to ambient light exposure during this extended duration. So even when using flash, shutter speeds need to be fast enough, like the rule-of-thumb 1/focal-length speeds, to prevent ambient light from giving your shots a blurred look due to camera shake, as well as subject movement.

• Indoor shooting with portrait mode is better than auto to reduce noise - While it tops out at iso800 instead of iso1600, it also will use iso400 on a lot of typical flash shots that auto (on dial) will use iso800, so it's a little more conservative, which is better than simply capping it. Manual ISO can do better than both, by letting you lower ISO for the cleanest shots, but read my next tip.
• Warning - watch your flash power when using manual ISO. Distance and zoom increase flash power needs. If you set your ISO to 100 for the absolute cleanest pictures, you will run out of range quickly, especially when zooming. ISO200 is still excellent, so don't be too stingy about hiking up the ISO to 200, or even 400. A little noise is better than an underexposed shot.
  
  Comment: This seems to contradict to rule #O2. I believe, flash shots do better with higher ISO due to wider range and better exposition of rooms. MH

• Balance in more ambient light for flash shots by using higher ISOs and slower shutter speeds at the expense of more noise in situations where this is preferred/desired. This is the Fuji default. A higher ISO setting requires less flash power, so the flash will recharge more quickly, and batteries will last longer also.
• Use negative flash compensation to prevent blown highlights (unrecoverable) on flash shots.

• Some people miss the Auto-ISO 400 setting the F30 has. Remember that Landscape/Portrait/SP(Party) modes use Auto-ISO 800, SP(Night) mode uses Auto-ISO 200. While all this isn't Auto-ISO 400, it is at least something. Also, up to ISO 800, the noise you see on the computer screen will not bother you, even in large prints.

• It is often said that Fuji cameras have cold, blueish colours. Others call this neutral. However, you can influence the colour temperature by changing the white balance manually.
  For outdoor shoots the setting "Clouds" results in warmer, more colourful mood what many people like.
  Just make some test with different settings to make up your mind.

• SP(Fireworks) sets the lens to its hyperfocal distance at F8 (and keeps it there while zooming). Autofocus is disabled. This is nice for night shots were you don't want to bother with focusing: go to SP(Fireworks), zoom & frame the shot, switch AF to manual, go to A or M mode (set aperture to F8), and shoot.
  Below you find a detailed table.

• Separate AE-/AF-Lock: Switch to manual focus, use AF button to focus, use half-press to set exposure elsewhere, frame shot and shoot. 

• Not focussing fast enough? Look in the menu for the high speed mode, but note the limitations: it increases the minimum focusing distance from 0.4m to 2m at wide angle and from 2m to 4m at full telephoto so it is no good when your subject is close to you. And that is uses battery power more quickly.

• The post-shot preview in the 1.5 and 3 second setting displays the shot without in-camera processing (no de-noise, no barrel distortion correction, etc.). Both continuous settings display the fully processed shot, with some processing delay.
• Normally, when using instant review immediately after taking a shot, you cannot zoom into a shot or pan immediately while in photo mode, so you have to switch to playback mode to take a closer look. But in the setup menu, there is a review setting called "zoom continuous." This option pops the review image onto the LCD at full zoom immediately after taking the shot so you can check focus and pan for lazy eyes, stupid looking faces, etc, then zoom out slowly, or immediately back out to the full picture by pressing the back button, or simply half press the shutter release to immediately go back to live view for the next shot. The FD button works as well for review when you are using "zoom continuous" mode. This allows you to take a closer look at your shot without ever having to leave picture taking mode.
• An addon from fabi of the FinePix Forum:
  If you find the 1.5 seconds preview is too long - you cannot switch it off - you may find this trick helpful: in the continuous picture mode no preview is shown. And there is no need to take a series of pictures, one is enough. So you can take the next picture after 0.7 seconds instead of 1.5 seconds. Obviously you then have to abandon the flash.
  

• Deleting can only be done in playback mode, and it's very slow (annoying on both counts.) Dont get distracted deleting images when you should be taking pictures. Go ahead and buy another memory card if space is getting tight and delete the bad pictures on your computer later.

• To turn off barrel distortion correction (and all other processing), shoot RAW. RAW images are 12MP (4096x3072), but effective resolution is somewhere between 6MP and 12MP. The Finepix Studio RAW converter seems to apply the same barrel distortion correction as the camera (resulting images loose a few pixels in either direction).
• For that demanding shot, use RAW to preserve maximum recoverable details in the dark and highlighted areas with a greater dynamic range, then post process. Note that it uses more memory and increases write time while using the camera and post processing conversion time can be slow, not to mention "your" time when making adjustments. 
• The Finepix software, s7raw, and Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) all support S6000FD raw conversion (ACR doesn't support S6500FD without hacking a file.) I wouldn't recommend using it with the camera as your standard.
• The reviewer over at dcresource.com recommends using RAW especially at higher ISO. It looks like the S6x00fd is oversharpening a little, and this seems to cause artifacts especially combined with the NR at higher ISO.

• All screw-on 58mm threaded accessories will work with the S6x00fd. This includes filters, converters, close-up lenses, circular and linear (!) polarizers.
• The "pro" lens cap on the S6500 will also clip onto filters, so you can add a protective UV filter as a permanent fixture.
• The lens cap will also clip on with the flare hood fitted.

• When connected via USB cable the camera is not recognized as USB mass storage. So you cannot copy pictures to and from the camera as you could with an USB stick.
  If you whish to do so, you have to use a card reader (see accessories).
  The camera supports PTP (picture transfer protocol) as more and more actual cameras do. Who does not want to transfer his pics with Fujis FinePixViever can easily install the PTP driver in Windows XP from the CD. You then can with Windows XP Tools or other programs like Picasa transfer ypur pictures.

Aperture/Focal length

"Paulsens" cheat sheet:

Combination of Settings