CNET Asia Review

Usable high-ISO sensitivities, good photo quality, and a brawny battery highlight the appeal of the 6-megapixel Fujifilm FinePix F10. It's a compact point-and-shoot package that includes a 3x optical zoom and a 2.5-inch LCD that's usable under a variety of difficult lighting conditions. Photo enthusiasts might be disappointed by the lack of manual controls for exposure and focus and by the image quality, which is long on latitude but suffers from fringing that pulls it up short. Snapshooters who like lots of scene modes will find only five to choose from, but fans of this camera's special features will find its shortcomings merely minor annoyances.

Design
LCDs aren't just for review anymore. The Fujifilm FinePix F10's huge 2.5-inch display will make you wonder why you ever put up with peering through your last point-and-shoot's tiny optical porthole. You can easily compose shots on the full LCD, whether you're holding this compact's 155g, 91 x 58 x 28mm aluminum body a few inches away or at arm's length. The LCD's 60fps refresh rate resists ghost images, is readable under direct illumination, gains up under dim light for enhanced viewing of murky scenes, and gets a temporary brightness boost when you press up on the four-way cursor pad. Or you can opt to compose using a 1.5-inch (diagonal) view, with thumbnails of your last three shots running down the left side of the live display.

A two-handed grip is your best bet if you want to keep one finger poised over the shutter release mounted on top of the camera while thumbing the sensitive zoom rocker on the back panel. On top, this camera's minimalist controls include a (nonilluminated) power button and a shutter button concentric with a dial that selects Auto, Manual, or Motion Picture mode or one of a handful of scene modes.

The equally clean back panel is dominated by the LCD, which is flanked by a zoom rocker, a display/info button, picture-review and function keys, and a four-way cursor pad with a central Menu/OK button. You press up on the pad to access the LCD brightness control or to delete the currently displayed photo. Press left to enter Macro mode, right to set flash options, or down to activate the self-timer.

All other functions, including exposure-compensation settings (plus or minus 2EV in 1/3EV increments), are available from the screens that pop up when the function or menu buttons are pressed. These include white-balance settings; your choice of 64-segment multipoint evaluative, spot, or average metering; and continuous autofocus or center or multipoint single autofocus.

To charge the camera, you must connect the power cable to the transformer, then connect the transformer to a cable adaptor, then connect the adaptor to the camera. The same adaptor is used to connect the data cable when you want to download your images. This seems unnecessarily cumbersome--the F10 is surely big enough to accomodate separate power and USB ports.

You'll need this adaptor, as well as the transformer, to charge the camera's battery.

Other cool features include a variety of continuous-shooting modes. You can snap off three shots in a row in about a second and a half, shoot 40 full-resolution images in about a minute, or snap off those same 40 shots but retain only the last three captured before you released the shutter button. The last feature, also found on some competing cameras, such as recent Nikon point-and-shoots, is great when you don't know exactly when the action is going to peak.

Minimovie fans will like this camera's ability to shoot decent flicks at 640x480-pixel resolution, 30fps with sound for almost 15 minutes using a 1GB xD-Picture Card. The video clips can be played back, fast-forwarded, reversed, or viewed single-frame, but no in-camera trimming is available.

Thanks to the F10's hefty battery, the built-in flash is robust enough to illuminate subjects out to 6.4m with the lens at the wide-angle setting and out to 4m at the telephoto position (both on Auto ISO). You can choose Auto, Red-Eye, Fill, Flash Off, Slow Sync (for balancing flash with ambient illumination), and Slow Sync/Red-Eye flash settings.

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User Reviews

tlkwhacker

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Great Camera that has served me well

Oct 15, 2006

Rating: 8 out of 10 (Excellent)
Pros: Fast start-up. Good and sharp pics. Video function useful. Battery Life is amazingly long.
Cons: Need to use xD card. Auto ISO settings not very accurate especially in low lighting.
Opinion:
Had the camera for almost 10months now. Bought it as part of a company's welfare initiative. Though the F11 was the latest then, only F10 was available. Bought it at a reasonably low price. But it turned out to be a very good camera. The picture quality of the F10 is quite good. And it is easy to use. The reviewers say that it is not feature rich but I probably don't need them. The shutter lag time is almost like a non-digicam and from power on to taking the picture also takes a very very short time. I notice that this is true for the other newer models of Fujifilm cameras too. Other than the need to set the ISO settings, this has been a wonderful camera for me.

 

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