Fujifilm FinePix T200 Review

June 14, 2011 | Matt Grayson | Rating star Rating star Rating star Rating star

Introduction

Fujifilm have introduced the new T series to their range of cameras. Designed to be slim and sexy but with a host of features bristling under the casing, the Fujifilm Finepix T200 sports a 14 megapixel CCD, 10x optical zoom, HD video, scene recognition as well as some of the newer functions from the top end cameras such as photobook assist, upload marker for Facebook or YouTube and the easy panorama shooting system. Aimed to appeal to the holiday maker with a family that want a good quality camera without the price and also require a long zoom without the bulk. The Fujifilm Finepix T200 is available in black, silver, blue and red for £150 / $180.

Ease of Use

Being a more curvy model, the T200 certainly looks different. On the front, the large lens barrel takes up most of the space and with it being so imposing it's hard to notice either the slim flash or the leatherette grip. The casing sweeps out to the lens giving the camera an attractive design and the curves continue through to the back where the layout – although standard – is nice with all the controls at your fingertips. There are three small rubber grips to place your thumb when it's not rotating the command dial or pressing a button. It would've been ultra cool to have them light up when the camera turns on but it's not detrimental to the design.

The command dial takes up a lot of the camera, in fact we're surprised that Fuji have used such a large dial and knocked the screen down to a 2.7 inch type. Especially with more cameras using a 3 inch screen, bigger is certainly better these days. The dial has 8 options for video, two dedicated scene modes which are programmable to your favourite scene, the natural and natural with flash options followed by the more logical auto, scene recognition auto and program. We use the word logical because we wonder about the need for the natural and natural with flash modes needing a dedicated option on the command dial. They could just as easily be put in the menu system allowing for two  more widely used commands or to make the dial smaller.

Fujifilm FinePix T200 Fujifilm FinePix T200
Front Rear

Most interesting on the T200 is the lack of the popular F button. It's been on the Fujifilm digital compact cameras for around 7 years now and this is the first camera we've seen that doesn't have it on. The FinePix colour option is still present, it's now found in the main menu which is, and always has been, very easy to use. However, there are only two tabs for shooting and set-up and the set-up menu has four long pages of options. A third option for camera controls, maybe, which would shift the image display, frame number, 4 volume controls, 2 LCD controls, background colour, date & time, language and reset into a separate area of three pages leaving the set-up menu with two. Much more manageable and it's not as disheartening when you need to change something and have to find it in the menu.

Fujifilm say that the T200 has stolen features from the top end models to use on the new T series.  We like the image marker system for uploading to popular websites such as Facebook and YouTube. It will certainly interest social networkers and the young, tech-savvy. We can imagine parkour runners using this camera to zoom in on the action and then mark it for uploading it onto YouTube. In fact, it's a shame that the Fujifilm couldn't be Eye-fi compatible because that would be a massive bonus for that crowd.

Fujifilm FinePix T200 Fujifilm FinePix T200
Top Side

Four of the major features that are being trumpeted are the photobook assist, motion panorama, face recognition and HD video. Face recognition is an evolution of face detection so don't get them mixed up. It works by programming the camera what someone looks like, for example your best friend, by taking a picture of them. You can even add a name. Then whenever that friend is in the shot, face recognition will see them and prioritise that face over all others. You can also search through pictures on your memory card by name.

Motion panorama is actually a very good system. After Sony released sweep panorama, taking panoramic pictures by aligning three pictures using an opaque template of the previous shot seemed tedious, long winded and above all, it didn't work as well. The way that the Fuji creates panoramas is by using a marker system. After taking the first picture, a cross appears at the right side of the frame with a cut-out cross on the left side. As you sweep, the cross on the right moves over to the left and as soon as you align the two, the camera automatically takes a picture. When you've taken all three, it will stitch them together. Not as easy as the Sony, but a hell of a lot easier than the older versions still favoured by other manufacturers.

One of the interesting things on the T200 is the photobook assist mode. The idea is that if you want to create a photobook, you can arrange your pictures in camera including the cover and the camera will show you on the screen what the book will look like. As a handy tip, if you have a lot of pictures on the card, don't simply select all thinking that you'll save time because the processing takes what seems like forever. In actual fact it's a few minutes but the camera is frozen while it's performing the operation.

Fujifilm FinePix T200 Fujifilm FinePix T200
Memory Card Slot Battery Compartment

Face recognition has been around for a few years now and is a progression from face detection that Fujifilm pioneered. It allows you to store the faces of friends and family that you want to pick out of a crowd. Then let's say you're taking a picture of your friends in a crowded bar or at a busy tourist spot on holiday, the camera will detect all faces but once it recognises your friends, it will prioritise them in the frame and ignore other faces in the frame.

The Fujifilm FinePix T200 is beautifully sculpted to the point that it looks like a camera that would be around £200 - £300. However, it's priced at the £130 mark and that needs to be taken into consideration when looking at the features. You see, they're not that special. There's nothing new and what it does have isn't particularly compelling. However, for the price, the zoom, design and build quality are very good. We think that there are a lot of features that will appeal to the younger crowd such as the face recognition, Facebook and YouTube upload and the easy panorama stitch. Not to mention the sexy design and nice low price.

In the box is a lithium ion battery and charger, driver software and quick start guide to get you shooting straight away. The full manual is on the disc that comes with the camera. There's also a wrist strap to prevent you from dropping the camera.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 14 megapixe Finel JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 6Mb.

Noise

Considering the price point that the T200 is sat at, while we expected a good performance from the camera, we didn't expect it to blow our socks off. However, the noise results from the camera are simply stunning for this level. At ISO 100 there's no trace of noise whatsoever. Normally on a £130 camera, there's some noticeable degradation in image quality and although if you really stare hard at full magnification there's a very small loss in edge definition, it's so miniscule that you have to even squint your eyes to notice it.

At ISO 400, an opaque colour cast introduces itself to dark areas, such as shadows. The exceptional detail and lack of salt and pepper noise which can break down a picture is still going strong.

ISO 800 is another story. Detail has deteriorated significantly when compared to the previous settings and the colour cast is stronger. Salt and pepper noise has invaded dark areas as well and moving up to ISO 1600 exacerbates the problems.

There's a final ISO 3200 setting which drops the resolution down to 3 megapixels in an attempt to reduce noise. It works to a degree, the colour cast is removed substantially and salt and pepper noise is also nearly gone.

ISO 100 (100% Crop)

ISO 200 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 400 (100% Crop)

ISO 800 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 1600 (100% Crop)

ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Fujifilm FinePix T200's 10x zoom lens offers a versatile focal range, as illustrated by these examples:

28mm

280mm

Sharpening

We normally harp on about how sharpening is ok straight out of camera but how it benefits from a boost in Photoshop and while this is also the case, we're confident that you'd be happy with how sharp the pictures are without any additional sharpening in an editing suite.

Original (100% Crop)

Sharpened (100% Crop)

   

File Quality

The Fujifilm FinePix T200 has 2 different image quality settings available, with Fine being the highest quality option. Here are some 100% crops which show the quality of the various options.

High

Normal

Chromatic Aberrations

While we discovered chromatic aberration in pictures from the Fujifilm FinePix T200, it dosn't pose too much of a problem. The most noticeable occasions we found it in the test is on the sample shots below.

Example 1 (100% Crop)

Example 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

The T200 has a close focusing capability of 5cm. This is good enough for most situations, for example the token lizard shot when on holiday. However, because it works at wide-angle, there's a large amount of barrel distortion making straight lines bow outwards. Centre sharpness is excellent although it does start to go fuzzy out towards the edges.

Macro Shot

100% Crop

Flash

The flash is built-in to the camera at the front and there are 4 options: auto flash, forced flash on, flash off and slow synchro. Make sure you use a tripod for that last one due to the long exposure.

Without the flash, there's a small amount of vignetting in the corners at wide-angle, and this gets worse as the lens is zoomed in. Using flash darkens what vignetting is already present giving pictures a toy camera effect.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (28mm)

Flash On - Wide Angle (28mm)

ISO 64 ISO 64
   

Flash Off - Wide Angle (280mm)

Flash On - Wide Angle (280mm)

ISO 64 ISO 64

Although the camera has a red-eye fix mode in the main menu under the set-up tab, we found that the flash didn't give any red-eye anyway.

Flash On

Flash On (100% Crop)
   

Red Eye Reduction

Red Eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

As well as the night scene mode which reduces the amount of features available in the menu system. Switching over to program mode allows more control over the ISO for a lower noise image but we found that when it's completely night, the camera doesn't have a long enough shutter speed and so the pictures came out dark. In night scene mode, they were a lot more balanced but the camera used a higher ISO 800 setting which broke the image down.

Night

Night (100% Crop)

   

Night Scene

Night Scene (100% Crop)

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Fujifilm FinePix T200 camera, which were all taken using the 14 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample Movie & Video

This is a sample movie at the highest quality setting of 1280x720 pixels at 30 frames per second. Please note that this 16 second movie is 56.4Mb in size.

Product Images

Fujifilm FinePix T200

Front of the Camera

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Front of the Camera / Lens Extended

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Isometric View

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Isometric View

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Isometric View

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Rear of the Camera

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Rear of the Camera / Turned On

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

 

Fujifilm FinePix T200

Rear of the Camera / Playback Menu

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Rear of the Camera / Book Menu

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Top of the Camera

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Side of the Camera

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Side of the Camera

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Front of the Camera

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Front of the Camera

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Memory Card Slot

 
Fujifilm FinePix T200

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The test of the Fujifilm FinePix T200 has been a rollercoaster ride of opinions. When we first opened the box we found an attractive, sleek camera in a pretty colour that seemed to be bristling with technology and innovation. As we progressed through the test, we found that the camera was nothing more than a box standard digital compact camera with no special modes to break it from the herd. However, taking into consideration the price of the camera, we forgave the T200's lack of progressive features.

Whatever negative thoughts we had about the T200 before the picture test soon dissipated because the image quality for a camera at this level is amazing. Noise pictures are super smooth from low settings all the way through to the mid-range and while noise does accelerate rapidly from ISO 800 onwards, to get such good results from a camera up to that setting is great. We found that thanks to an excellent noise performance, colours aren't compromised as easily so image quality is even better than we thought it would be. However, the camera benefits from this mostly in the detailed pictures. Your macro pictures will really pop out although be careful if you're using items with straight lines because of the severe barrel distortion.

The T200 is a camera that will suit the technophobe that wants a camera that can do everything for them or the beginner who simply doesn't want to be bogged down with advanced modes and manual controls. Thanks to the attractive price and zoom range, it would make a good camera for families enjoying holidays and if they have older kids going out to nightclubs, it's a good looking camera for them to take with them and at the low price, it won't matter too much if it gets damaged. Grandparents wanting pictures of the kids will also be happy with the child mode, zoom and red-eye fix as well as the higher ISO performance to freeze the action without using the flash. If you fit into any of these categories, try this camera.

4 stars

Ratings (out of 5)
Design 4.5
Features 3.5
Ease-of-use 4
Image quality 4.5
Value for money 4

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Fujifilm FinePix T200 from around the web.

expertreviews.co.uk »

Image quality is nothing special, but with a strong set of features topped off with a 10x zoom, it's easily worth the low price.
Read the full review »

Specifications

Number of effective pixels

14.0 million pixels

CCD sensor

1/2.3-inch CCD with primary color filter

Storage media

Internal memory (none) SD / SDHC memory card

File format

Still image - JPEG (Exif Ver 2.3) (Design rule for Camera File system compliant / DPOF-compatible) Movie - AVI (Motion JPEG) Sound - WAVE format, Monaural sound

Lens

Fujinon 10x optical zoom lens

Lens focal length

f=5.0- 50.0mm, equivalent to 28-280mm on a 35mm camera

Focus

Mode - Single AF / Continuous AF (SR AUTO, Movie) Type - TTL contrast AF AF frame selection - Center / Tracking

Focus distance

Normal - Wide : Approx. 45cm to infinity / 1.5ft. to infinity Telephoto : Approx. 2.0m to infinity / 6.6ft to infinity Macro - Wide : Approx. 5cm - 2.5m / 2.0in.-8.2ft. Telephoto : Approx. 90cm - 2.5m / 3.0ft.- 8.2ft.

Shutter speed

(Auto mode) 1/4sec. to 1/2000sec., (All other modes) 8sec. to 1/2000sec.

Aperture

F3.4 / F8.4 (Wide) F5.6 / F14 (Telephoto) with ND filter

Sensitivity

Auto / Equivalent to ISO 100 / 200 / 400 / 800 / 1600 / 3200* (Standard Output Sensitivity) * ISO 3200 is effective in S mode.

Exposure modes

Programmed AE

White balance

Automatic scene recognition. Preset - Fine, Shade, Fluorescent light (Daylight), Fluorescent light (Warm White), Fluorescent light (Cool White), Incandescent light

LCD Monitor

2.7-inch, approx. 230,000 dots, TFT colour LCD monitor, approx. 96% coverage

Self-timer

Approx. 10sec. / 2sec. delay

Video Output

NTSC / PAL selectable with monaural sound

Digital Interface

USB 2.0 High-speed

Power source

NP-45A Li-ion battery (included)

Dimensions

97(W) x 56.5(H) x 28.1(D) mm / 3.7(W) x 1.9(H) x 0.9(D) in. (Minimum depth : 18.5mm / 0.7in.)

Weight

Approx. 134g / 4.7oz. (excluding accessories, battery and memory card) Approx. 151g / 5.3oz. (including accessories, battery and memory card)

Digital Zoom

Approx. 6.7x (up to approx. 67x , with 10x optical zoom)

Shooting modes

SP - Portrait, Baby, Smile, Landscape, Panorama, Sport, Night, Night (Tripod), Fireworks, Sunset, Snow, Beach, Party, Flower, Text. MODE DIAL - SR AUTO, AUTO, Natural Light, Natural Light & with Flash, SP1, SP2, Movie, P

Movie recording

1280 x 720 pixels / 640 x 480 pixels / 320 x 240 pixels (30frames/sec.) with monaural sound. * Zoom function can be used. * Sounds will not be recorded during optical zoom operation.

Playback

Face Detection, Photobook assist, Image search, Erase selected frames, Slide show, Auto red-eye removal, Protect, Crop, Resize, Image rotate, Mark for upload, Multi-frame playback (with Microthumbnail), Panorama, Favourite

Voice memo

WAVE format, Monaural sound

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