Fujifilm Finepix A205S Zoom

Review Date: May 11th 2004

Features

The Fujifilm FinePix A205S Zoom has a 2.0 megapixel CCD that delivers 1.9 million recorded pixels. There are three image sizes available (1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 640 x 480 pixels). The camera features a Fujinon 3X optical zoom lens that is equivalent to a 36–108mm lens on a 35mm format camera. The Fujifilm Finepix F700 only supports the xD-Picture Card format.

This camera offers one exposure mode (Programmed AE), one metering mode (TTL 64-zone) and one type of focusing (Autofocus), so the emphasis is definitely on simplicity. The aperture range is f3.0– f10.8 and the shutter speed range is 1/2 sec. – 1/2000 sec. There is only 1 ISO speed available, equivalent to ISO 200. There are 7 different White Balance settings to choose from (Automatic, Manual, Fine, Shade, Fluorescent light (Daylight), Fluorescent light (Warm White), Fluorescent light (Cool White), and Incandescent light).

The Fujifilm FinePix A205S Zoom has two shooting modes, Auto and Manual. The built-in flash offers a range of different modes (Auto, Red-eye Reduction, Forced Flash, Suppressed Flash, (Slow Synchro., Red-eye Reduction and Slow Synchro : in the Manual shooting mode). The effective range is approx. 0.8 m – 4.5m at the wide-angle lens setting, and approx. 0.8m – 3.0m at the telephoto lens setting.

Images are recorded as JPEGs in a range of different quality and size settings. To compose your images, you can use both the LCD monitor and the traditional optical viewfinder. The Fujifilm FinePix A205S Zoom has a 1.5 inch colour TFT LCD monitor which has 60,000 pixels, and is powered by 2 x AA size alkaline batteries / Ni-MH rechargeable batteries.

The Fujifilm FinePix A205S Zoom can record movies at 2 different settings; 320 x 240 pixels at 10 frames/sec. without sound, or 160 x 120 pixels at 10 frames/sec. without sound. Both settings are recorded in the Motion JPEG format, a type of AVI format that can be played back by QuickTime 3 or later. The video-output socket allows you to connects the camera to your television.

The Fujifilm FinePix A205S Zoom dimensions are 98.5 (W) x 54 (H) x 65mm (D) and Max. depth: 52.5mm, and it weighs 175g without batteries and storage card fitted.

Finally, the box kit that I reviewed contains two AA alkaline batteries, 16Mb xD-Picture Card, hand strap, software CD-ROM, video cable, USB cable and cradle adapter, (for optional PictureCradle). The supplied software CD includes USB drivers, Fujifilm's FinePix Viewer 4.0 for image browsing, and ImageMixer VCD for creating multimedia albums. You will need to invest in a few more xD-Picture Cards to store your images on, as the supplied 16Mb can only store approximately 25 images at the 2M file quality setting.