Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR

Author's product rating:   

Picture Quality	Excellent
Range & Quality of Features	Excellent
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Durability	Excellent
Overall Look & Design	Excellent
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Superb image quality, excellent battery life, no loss of quality on zoom
Disadvantages:	only 48mb memory

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

== FinePix F200EXR ==

Introduction

Photos. They’re everywhere these days! With the advent of social networking, camera manufacturers are doing a roaring trade selling digital cameras to the masses. The masses that are dead set on trying to outdo their friends with the quality and quantity of photos on sites such as facebook. I was fortunate enough to get the facebook bug some time ago and sailed along happily for months. But something was missing. Whilst all my friends and co-workers were busy uploading photos in the hundreds to their profile, detailing every aspect of their lives from holidays to family occasions, and even sometimes, photos I would deem wholly inappropriate to share with hundreds of “friends”, I was stuck with only a few photos taken on my webcam or my phone. I decided it would be nice to start taking photography more seriously and so I set out to buy a digital camera that would enable me to take quality photo’s at all those unique moments that just seem to crop up all the time.

Choosing the camera

I’m not much of a person to research into things before I buy them, usually I buy something because I like the look of it, or I buy solely because of a specification I have seen or a special offer. Buying my camera was much the same. I asked around at work to see if anybody could point me to a shop that sold cameras, I was in rather a hurry as we were going on holiday the following week and really wanted to get something before we went so that I would be able to take it with us. My boss recommended Jessops. I browsed their website for small cameras, and sorted the list showing the highest price cameras first. My budget was around £300, and I figured the best way to go would be to get something towards the top end of my budget, thinking that it would be of superior quality to some of the much lower priced cameras.

Scrolling down the list, I came across the F200EXR, the first thing I noticed was how it looks, it is very smart, and it appealed to my desire to always try and have the latest flash gadgets. It looked very smart indeed. I took a quick look at the spec and decided I would buy it. £290 later (including delivery) I just had to sit back and wait. My camera arrived the next day and I couldn’t wait to get started, I took it out of the box and started taking pictures of myself…. Before deciding that I would probably break it with my ugly mug.

The Look and Feel

The F200EXR looks amazing, it is really very smart, and very small too. It fits easily into my pocket for safe keeping. It is black and silver and the colours go together very well whilst also matching with my existing gadgets. The camera is only about 10cm wide, 6cm tall and just over 2cm deep, about the same size as a small block of cheese…. Only lighter. The camera is very light and easy to carry around and use without feeling cumbersome at all.

Taking Pictures

Taking pictures is simple, just put it into record mode and shoot! There is a big LCD display on the back which is very handy for viewing the pictures you have taken and deleting/retaking them if necessary. Nearly all of my pictures have come out perfectly so far, except for one where I stupidly had my finger half over the lense!

There are loads of options you can set before taking your pictures and I haven’t gone through all these yet as I have had no need to, the standard settings seem to adjust for any situation.

The main function that most people will use is the zoom. We have an old camera at work with a zoom function, and although pictures taken on this camera (at work) are ok, if we zoom in on anything we seem to lose all clarity in the image. My new camera is different. Everything I have zoomed in on has looked just as clear as if I hadn’t zoomed in, you can zoom to 5x the original size with absolutely (or no perceptible) loss of quality.

I also found a nifty little function whereby you can apply image effects to your photos as you take them. For example, you can take photos in black and white, or sepia, or a couple of other styles which I haven’t used much because they didn’t make my pictures look too good, but I think that may be the situations that I was taking the pictures in.

Overall for most people they will only need to press the button and not change any of the options as the camera appears to perform just as well at night as it does during the day, just as well close up as it does from a distance.

The on screen interface is easy to understand, just as the wheel and buttons on the back and top are. Mostly its just logic, but I did have to look in the manual to find out what all the options did on the wheel, although like I said, I haven’t had the need to use any of these, the standard recording one works just fine for me.

The only downsize is it only has 48mb of memory, which is fine for most people, but if you are going away anywhere for any length of time you will probably need to buy an SD card to boost your memory capacity. If you will be deleting or uploading pictures fairly regularly you should find that the camera has enough storage for your needs.

Battery Life and Connectivity

So far I have not needed to recharge my camera, I charged it when I first got it, and then I have had it a few weeks, took it away with us, and have taken a few random photos whenever we have gone out and the battery is now half empty so the battery life is very good. Uploading photos to my computer is easy, just connect via USB and away you go!

Specifications

• Number of effective pixels
  12 million pixels
• CCD sensor
  1/ 1.6-inch Super CCD HR
• Storage media
  Internal memory (approx. 48MB) / xD-Picture Card™ ( 16MB - 2 GB ) /SD memory card / SDHC
• File format
  Still image: JPEG (Exif Ver 2.2 ) Movie: AVI (Motion JPEG ) Audio: WAVE format, Monaural sound
• Lens
  Fujinon 5x optical zoom lens, F3.3 (Wide) - F5.1 (Telephoto)
• Lens focal length
  f=6.4 - 32.0mm, equivalent to 28 - 140mm on a 35mm camera
• Focus
  Auto focus (Area, Multi, Centre) / Continuous AF, AF assist illuminator available
• Focus distance
  Normal Wide: Approx. 45cm / 1.5ft. to infinity Telephoto: Approx. 80cm / 2.6ft. to infinity Macro Wide: Approx. 5cm - 80cm / 0.2ft. - 2.6ft. Telephoto: Approx. 50cm - 1m / 1.6ft. - 3.3ft.
• Shutter speed
  (Auto mode) 1/4 sec. to 1/1500 sec., (All other modes) 8 sec. to 1/1500 sec.
• Aperture
  Wide: F3.3 / F9.0, Telephoto: F5.1 / F14.0
• Sensitivity
  Auto / Auto(3200) / Auto(1600) / Auto(800) / Auto(400) / Equivalent to ISO 100 / 200 / 400 / 800 / 1600 / 3200 / 6400 / 12800 (Standard Output Sensitivity) * Number of recorded pixels: ISO6400: "M" or "S", ISO12800: "S"only
• Exposure modes
  Programmed AE, Aperture Priority AE, Manual
• White balance
  Automatic scene recognition Preset: Fine, Shade, Fluorescent light (Daylight), Fluorescent light (Warm white), Fluorescent light (Cool white), Incandescent light, Underwater lighting Custom
• LCD Monitor
  3.0-inch, Approx. 230,000 dots, TFT color LCD monitor, Approx. 100% coverage
• Self-timer
  Approx. 10 sec./2 sec. delay
• Video Output
  NTSC / PAL selectable
• Digital Interface
  USB 2.0 High-speed
• Power source
  Rechargeable NP-50 Li-ion battery (included) / CP-50 with AC power adapter AC-5VX (sold separately)
• Dimensions
  97.7(W) x 58.9(H) x 23.4(D)mm / 3.8(W) x 2.3(H) x 0.9(D)in. (excluding accessories and attachments)
• Weight
  Approx. 175g/6.2oz. (excluding accessories, batteries and memory card)
• Digital Zoom
  Approx 4.4 X
• Shooting modes
  Mode dial: Auto, EXR, Natural Light, Natural Light & with Flash, SP, P, M, Movie SP: Portrait, Portrait Enhancer, Landscape, Sport, Night, Fireworks, Night (Tripod), Sunset, Snow, Beach, Underwater, Museum, Party, Flower, Text
• Movie recording
  640 x 480 pixels, 30 frames/sec. b320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames/sec. With monaural sound, AVI format (Motion JPEG) * Zoom cannot be used during recording
• Playback
  Face Detection (with Red-eye removal), Slideshow, Trimming, Multi-frame playback (with Micro Thumbnail), Sorting by date, Image rotate, Resize, Voice memo
• Voice memo
  Up to 30 sec. WAV format

Conclusion

I am very happy with my little camera, I know I could have probably got the same quality for less money but I really don’t care. I am sure this camera is going to bring me many hours of enjoyment and memories for years to come. I do want to get an SD card very soon just so I can be sure that I have plenty of space to store my photos, but other than that this camera is perfect in every way. I definitely do not think I could have got anything better than this, even for a higher price, overall I am very glad that I picked this one out and think it may have been one of my better choices in life.

I cannot fault the exceptional image quality and ease of use, I even gave it to my girlfriend whilst we were away and asked her to take a picture of me, and she didn’t ask how it works, amazing considering she asked me the other day how to open a bottle of wine with a corkscrew when it was a screw top bottle!

Highly recommended. Cheese!