Upholding the low-light tradition (Fujifilm Finepix F200EXR)

Member Name: rabidbadger

Product:	Fujifilm Finepix F200EXR
Date:	31/08/09 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great for parties and other low-light scenarios, Autofocus works amazingly well, EXR mode

Disadvantages: Slow start-up, Cumbersome menus

Much has been made in recent years if the quality of low-light/high ISO images produced by the Fuji FinePix F30 and F31d cameras - and rightly so. By not trying to cram more and more pixels onto their sensor, Fuji have been able to concentrate on getting better performance out of the ones that are already there and the 6mp cameras certainly make the most of the available light.

This tradition has been upheld with the development of the EXR sensor and the release of the F200EXR - a serious compact camera, with a serious price tag of around £330 (RRP).

It is basically an old Fuji FinePix F100fd with the new EXR sensor. It is a different colour but there aren't many other differences on the surface.

What is EXR Technology? If I could answer that, I'd be considerably richer than I am! As I understand it, it is all to do with the way the photosites are arranged on the sensor and the way they combine in a process called "pixel binning" (merging adjacent pixels to produce a mean colour value).

The sensor also has three different modes, each with its own colour filter: SH for low-light, HR for standard and DR for high-contrast situations and the camera selects automatically (assuming you haven't chosen to set this manually) depending on conditions.

What does this mean for me?
On the plus side, it means better pictures in low light
On the minus side, due to the complexity of the processing, no RAW image format is available

Physically, the camera is very small and compact, measuring 97.7mm (3.8in) x 58.9mm (2.3in) x 23.4mm (0.9in) and weighing in at just 175g (6.2oz). It has a dedicated rechargable battery and can accommodate XD, SD and SDHC cards, as well as having a 48MB internal memory.

The menus do seem a little strangely ordered and confusing to start with - although they do have a neat feature that reminds you of any changes you have made on the framing screen and tell you about any knock-on changes that may have been necessary.

The mode dial has 8 different settings - although, with the 3 EXR modes, there aren't many situations where you would need to change this from the EXR setting - these are as follows:

EXR - manual or automatic selection of 1 of 3 EXR modes
Auto - point & click mode
Natural - for use in non-flash scenarios
Natural + Flash - Takes two shots, one with the flash and one without (only available if the memory-card still has room for 2 pictures)
Program - full control over all the settings except shutter speed
Manual full control over all the settings including shutter speed (1/1000th to 8 sec)
SP - 15 preset scenes to choose from - Portrait, Portrait Enhancer, Landscape, Sport, Night, Fireworks, Night (Tripod), Sunset, Snow, Beach, Underwater, Museum, Party, Flower, Text
Movie Video recording with sound

In addition to these, there are Macro and Intelligent Flash modes that can be accessed via the cursor buttons on the rear of the camera, and a Silent Mode that can be activated by pressing and holding the DISP/BACK button.

There is a self-timer that can be set to either 2 or 10 seconds and is available in all shooting modes.

The aperture can be set in Program mode for Aperture Priority shooting but there are only two settings - fully open and fully open minus 3 steps - neither of which seem to have much of an effect on the Depth-Of-Field. I've a feeling the stepping is done by the software rather than actually changing the aperture size (but don't quote me on that). In any case, the maximum values for the zoom lens are f3.3 - f5.1

Exposure Compensation is available at +/-2EV

The optical zoom is controlled by a bezel around the shutter button and is stepped - which feels a little weird - but there are 14 steps so there is plenty of control and the range is impressive, equating to 28-140mm in SLR terms. Oh, and there is a 4.4x digital zoom too.

Video is recorded in 640x480 pixels or 320x240 pixels at 30fps AVI and is limited to around 2GB (around half an hour at 640x240. As with most cameras, zoom cannot be activated whilst video recording is in progress.

Autofocus is excellent and, even in low light, there aren't many situations where it fails to focus - thanks in no small part to the brilliant Auto-focus assist light. Auto-focus can be locked by pressing the shutter button halfway.

Continuous shooting ranges from 1.4fps to 5fps, depending on the chosen resolution

Summary: If low-light image quality and noise reduction is important to you then this is is for you.

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