By Rich Trenholm, CNET.co.uk
29/05/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39005881,42595107p,00.htm

The 10-megapixel Fujifilm FinePix Z20fd is the latest in a range of colorful, stylish compact snappers from the Japanese manufacturers. It is available now for around S$299, with the price and styling clearly aimed at the less demanding end of the market. Demanding as we are, we're curious to see how the Z20 measures up.

Design

The Z20fd is first and foremost a style camera. It comes in a rainbow of colors: Light green, blue, pink, red, and black--all furnished with silver accents. Although it may be a stylish camera in the eye of the beholder, we aren't keen on the pronounced tapering shape or sliding faceplates, either aesthetically or practically.

The tapering effect to the right-hand side is unusual: Generally, the right side is the chunkiest as that's where the camera is gripped. The Z20fd is less comfortable to hold one-handed with any stability, and it's impossible to press the buttons with your thumb without supporting the camera with your left hand. Watch those fingers, however, as it's all too easy for them to wander in front of the non-protruding lens. At 2.5-inch, the LCD screen isn't huge, either.

The round buttons themselves, surrounded by neat silver click rings, look cute until you realize the upper round bit isn't a button at all--which is a waste--and the tapering body makes the left side of the ring difficult to click. It seems likely that this camera was designed for someone with significantly smaller fingers than us, but does the YouTube generation really have midget hands? The dedicated movie button is a nice touch.

Features

Considering it costs S$299, the Z20fd isn't as feature-light as you might expect. Unfortunately, most of the features let themselves down. A 3x optical zoom lens is fairly standard, as is a 35mm-equivalent focal length of 35-105mm. Face detection is also pretty ubiquitous by now, but a range of red-eye removal options and IrSimple/IrSS infrared photo transfer are less common. Not that you'll be able to transfer your pictures via infrared to anything much except other Fujifilm cameras with the same function.

Playback mode has plenty of different viewing options, such as a 10 x 10 micro-thumbnail array, slideshows and resizing options for blogs or auctions. Sadly, you have no say in the level of resizing, so it's not as useful as it could be. We're also irritated by Fujifilm's continued refusal to make the playback button a toggle, pressing to return to shooting mode eliciting an onscreen ticking off that we should press the shutter button instead. We do, however, like that playback will highlight and zoom in on any faces found when originally focusing.

Images and video are recorded to xD-Picture Card, SD and SDHC memory cards. Video is recorded in the YouTube-friendly AVI format, at 640 x 480- or 320 x 240-pixel resolution at 30 frames per second (fps). No high-definition option, but in-camera editing is reasonably versatile as you can add new video to existing clips and edit out unwanted footage.

Performance

On the plus side, we didn't see much purple fringing or distortion. Sadly, that's about all the good things we have to say about the Z20fd's performance. Wading through menus to tweak even the most basic shooting option wasn't much fun, either.

Continuous shooting mode is woeful, capturing an image every 3 seconds in long period burst mode. You'll probably never find out how long that period is because, like us, you'll probably get fed up with the arthritic snapping that apparently refocuses between every shot. The Final 3 mode chugs away at 1fps and saves the last three shots no matter how long you hold the shutter, but we rarely had cause to use this mode and three shots isn't really enough.

Battery life is okay, but would probably have been better if the faceplate didn't keep opening in our pocket.

Image Quality

Low-light performance is one of Fujifilm's strongest points, but the Z20fd doesn't have the lens or sensor to deliver great pictures. Noise is present in images as low as ISO 200, while any higher than 800 is just bad for your eyes. Natural and flash mode are good ideas, capturing an image with and without flash, but in reality you end up with one horribly noisy image and 1 second-long gap between the two puts paid to any ideas of combining the two images at a later stage.

It's cheap and it's colorful--but so are Pick'n'Mix candies, and you wouldn't want that for every meal. If the representative of Generation Z in your life has their heart set on it, it won't ruin their lives, but we struggle to find anything exciting about the Fujifilm FinePix Z20fd.

There isn't a great deal of choice at this price point, but we'd suggest either the stylishly slim Casio Exilim EX-S10 or go for the novelty of a touchscreen with the gorgeous Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T70.