Fujifilm FinePix Z10fd review

The Fujifilm FinePix Z10fd is a fairly basic 7.2-megapixel point-and-shoot aimed squarely at the youth market. Priced around £100, it's being promoted through social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, with adverts emphasising the online sharing possibilities of such a user-friendly camera.

Design
With style so high on the agenda, the Z10fd is available in a range of colours: hot pink, wave blue, midnight black, wasabi green, moss green and sunset orange. Ours was red. We're not keen on the tapered curve to the right hand side as it makes the camera look a bit deformed, but that's a matter of personal taste.

Two clickpads keep things uncluttered at the back of the Z10fd, although the space in the centre of the upper pad could have been another button

There's a fairly standard 64mm (2.5-inch) LCD screen. Also on the back are two clickpads, keeping things uncluttered. We would like the central section of the upper clickpad to be a button, as it looks like a button, feels like a button and would make a great menu button. A rejig of the controls would free up space for important features like exposure compensation, which is instead buried in a menu.

The Z10fd is switched on by sliding across the brushed-effect faceplate. The faceplate is quite chunky and adds a few millimetres to what could have been an extremely small camera, although it's still eminently pocketable. Watch for fingers creeping into the lens placed so near the corner.

Features
Features include the ubiquitous face detection technology, as well as intelligent red-eye removal, infrared sharing and the option to choose xD or SD cards for memory needs. You also get the the usual wealth of scene modes, but as always, some -- like portrait mode -- are more useful than others -- like text mode, and the high-ISO low light mode. Beyond these there are few features, and not much in the way of manual control.

With blogging and multimedia sharing being the thrust of the Z10fd advertising, it's disappointing that the only options for picture size are standard (640x480 pixels) or small (320x240 pixels). There aren't actual online sharing features, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, although you can transmit your pictures by infrared.