Fujifilm FinePix Z30

Pocketable, affordable, durable what’s not to like about the Finepix Z30?

Take a quick look at Fujifilm’s FinePix Z30 and it won’t be long before you realise who this compact is pitched at. On the face of it the device exudes a fashionable, sleek exterior patterned with simplified controls and available in an electric rainbow of colours. Its feature set includes a successive movie option, blog mode, auction scene and a range of party and group settings. Team all this with its attractive price point, currently only £125, and you’ve got a compact fit for a tech-savvy teenager.

Aimed squarely at the fashion conscious youth market, the smoothly sculpted Z30 features a desirable exterior – a two tone matte and gloss shell, available in: Fuchsia Pink, Deep Purple, Jet Black, Pure White and Tangy Orange. Furthermore Fujifilm’s iconic style of lens cover makes an appearance here, but sports kitsch metal detailing, a functional as well as fashionable assets offering extra grip to slide the cover to activate the compact. Perhaps not the slimmest of shooters the Z30 is still perfectly pocketable, weighing in at a light 116.5g and offering dimensions that fit easily in any palm. Despite its small stature and plastic shell the device offers a satisfyingly durable quality.

A bright and largely visible in most conditions 2.7” LCD adorns the reverse adjacent to ten rubberised menu options including: zoom, delete, playback, macro, flash, timer, menu/ok, display/ back and movie mode. Four of the keys also double as directional arrows for navigation providing simplified shooting options for novice photographers, like wise the in-camera menu stream is very straightforward.

Evolving from Fujifilm’s popular Finepix Z20, the 10 megapixel newcomer hosts a range of new features such as Picture Stabilisation, a boon for crisper images and the Face Detection which pulls together the correct shooting settings - ideal for beginners. Automatically removing red eye is another appealing character trait as is the dual blog mode, but its the playback options which really take this device up a level delivering slideshows, a Micro Thumbnail Mode (showing 100 shots on the screen at once) and a trimming for blog feature catering for a range of exciting editing options.

However, there are a large number of niggles with the Z30 that leave us frustrated. The group timer mode for example allows the photographer to program how many subjects to expect in the scene with a disappointing maximum of four. Using face detection technology, the shutter will only release when the right number of heads appear in the scene. Whilst this is a nice idea in theory, in reality the technology is temperamental. In our tests the shutter would realise when a passer by strolled through the background, refused to shoot even though the correct number of faces were in the frame or most commonly - firing regardless of how many portraits filled the picture, i.e. as soon as one set it up. Similarly the ‘couple shot’ timer only allows the camera to fire when the pair is stood at a distance from each other predetermined by the user. These options include: near, close, or super close. This is an interesting idea but one that rarely paid off as we witnessed our subjects fruitlessly bobbing into positioning. Neither are ideal options for catching ‘the moment’, instead we recommend sticking to the traditional self timer options of 10 or 2 seconds.

Although the camera advertises a ‘manual mode’ in reality users can only affect a handful of settings such as: white balance, ISO and exposure compensation– there is no option to control shutter speed or aperture (other than to exploit scene modes) and the lack of a manual focus will disappoint creative photographers. In Scene Recognition Auto mode the camera recognises the scenario for you as either a: portrait, night, landscape, macro, night portrait or backlight portrait and gears the settings accordingly – nice for newbies but the technology is not perfect and can be known to program incorrectly, but users can select from one of the 16 scene modes.

The unit boasts a movie mode, but brags about its ‘successive movie mode’, which in essence is in camera editing. The appeal here is users can start and restart on multiple occasions and compile a 60 sec clip, by editing the start and end points accordingly. An asset perhaps appealing to the creative minds of the YouTube generation but for purposeful photographers it is unlikely to rank as a high priority especially as orchestrating edits can be rather fiddly. What is more users cannot zoom in or out during filming, nor does it refocus when moved. High def fans may also lament as the largest resolution on offer is a meagre 640 x 480 and sound is recorded only in mono, however voice tagging images is a nice touch.

In terms of image quality we were altogether impressed with what this £125 compact achieved but that’s not to say it was an outstanding performer. There were several issues with the auto focus, although beeping to signal a lock many of the resulting images were actually out of focus. We found the colour rendition to be slightly off too with our test shots exuding a blue cast, users can alter the white balance but we found all our efforts carried this cyan tinge. Sharpness appears to be average for a camera of this calibre, with no obvious barrel distortion at wide angle but the frames’ edges occasionally appeared less sharp but fringing seems to have been avoided. The Z30 meters a great deal better than many of its market contemporaries but it does tend to expose for the highlights, consequently shadows are robbed of detail. Noise was noticeable in shots from 200 but started to affect overall quality at 400 upwards, becoming uncomfortably at 800, again this isn’t ideal but certainly no worse than many of its peers.

Final Verdict Fashion over functionality is the focus here, but the Z30 has the potential to be a smart little shooter. Simplified options mean less hassle for photographers happy to point and shoot, but disappointment may reign for those craving more creative control. OVERALL

Backed with a journalism degree, Natalie has worked in the magazine industry for over five years. Since joining DP she has reviewed a plethora of cameras, gadgets and accessories, and is never afraid of telling it like it is.