Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD review

Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD Review

Reviewed by: Rich Trenholm

Reviewed on: 22 September 2008

Another feature for checking the quality of your snaps is a face detection zoom, which zooms into detected faces in a picture just after you've taken it, so that you can check that everything is in focus and re-take it if necessary.

Performance
Top three burst mode captures three full-resolution images in one second. Top 33 captures 33 frames in a blistering 4 seconds, but at a reduced 5-megapixel resolution. The extended burst mode fires away for at least 6 minutes, but at a less impressive 0.5 frames per second.

The flash is on the harsh side in automatic mode, and with no adjustment levels available in this mode, there's no middle ground between harshly lit flash-assisted pictures and noise-affected, blurry, dark images. In program and manual mode the flash can be tweaked, which provides a much more pleasing fill-in effect. Even with the flash on full power, we saw no trace of red-eye.

We say low-light images are noise-affected rather than simply noisy, because the S2000HD actually does a decent job of keeping speckly noise out of pictures. The cost is, as ever, a level of smearing of detail along with the noise grain. It's not really noticeable on screen, but could affect larger prints.

This shot of a daredevil cat on a railway bridge, taken on automatic, shows the smearing of detail in lower-light conditions

As always, best results can be achieved by making full use of the camera's adjustable options. With settings tweaked, the S2000 can show off its decent lens to best effect, with no purple fringing, lens distortion or vignetting apparent. There is some softness at full zoom, however.

Conclusion
The Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD didn't make a great first impression, with fiddly and confusing controls and variable automatic performance. It's not a patch on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18, say, for ease of use. But once we dived into the S2000's tweakable options we warmed to this superzoom, impressed with the quality of the lens and clever playback features.

Edited by Marian Smith