Fujifilm FinePix T200 Review

4.0

June 14, 2011 | Matt Grayson |

Buy a FinePix T200 Black Digital Camera (14 Megapixel - 5 mm-50 mm - 6.9 cm 2.7" LCD - 10x Optical Zoom - Optical IS - 4288 x 3216 Image - 1280 x 720 Video - Motion JPEG AVI - PictBridge)

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Buy a FinePix T200 14 Megapixel Compact Camera - Gunmetal (2.7" LCD - 10x Optical Zoom - Electronic, Optical IS - 4288 x 3216 Image - 1280 x 720 Video - Motion JPEG AVI - PictBridge)

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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)


Flash Off - Wide Angle (280mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (280mm)

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.