Introduction

Ease of Use

The Z1000EXR's lens sits in the top right of the camera (if viewed from the front) with a large plate of metal sliding over it to protect it and also power the camera on and off. The review model that we tested was the bright pink version which has a very smooth and glossy coating. With only a small, super-slim silver handgrip on the front, this does make the Z1000EXR rather difficult to hold steady. A clever addition to the Z1000EXR is a small mirror, essentially a poor man's version of the secondary LCD screen found on the front of Samsung Dual-View cameras, but proving almost as effective in practice. The AF assist lamp and built-in flash complete front of the Z1000EXR.

On the Fujifilm FinePix Z1000EXR's top plate, there's the shutter release with the zoom switch wrapped around it and a direct video record button for those candid moments so you don't have to go into menus and switch on the video mode first. The Z1000EXR records video in the H.264 format and you can tag videos in camera for easy upload to YouTube, something that the younger generation may prefer but that's not to say that it's off limits to anyone else. A new addition to the top of the camera is a small playback button.

One of the most important new features on the Z1000EXR is the Wireless Image Transfer functionality. By installing the free Photo Receiver app on your smartphone, connecting to the camera's wi-fi network, then pressing Connect simultaneously on both devices, you can transfer images from the Z1000EXR to an Android or iOS device and then edit and share the images as you wish. Up to 30 images can be transferred at one time. In practice it's a little laborious to get started, and we'd have also liked to be able to connect to any wi-fi network, not just a smartphone, but it does at least provide an easy way to get the images off the camera and onto a device or website of your choice.

Front	Rear

The Z1000EXR has a BSI EXR-CMOS sensor. BSI stands for Back Side Illuminated which means that all the circuitry that normally surrounds each pixel has been placed on the back of the sensor. This technique exposes the full sensor to light meaning that it's more responsive in low light situations and a lower ISO can therefore be used. The back of the sensor isn't actually illuminated, the sensor gets it's name from when it's fitted to the camera. Because the circuitry is on the back, it looks as though the sensor is fitted backwards so the back side gets illuminated by light from the lens.

EXR is a processor and sensor system designed to increase the resolution, produce better colours, lower noise and be an all round good egg. It's certainly shown a lot of promise in the past with the cameras that have been fitted with it. For those of you that aren't photographically astute, there are two types of sensor that are frequently used in digital cameras. The traditional variety is the CCD (Charge Coupled Device) offering a sharp image but has a higher fuel consumption than CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) which gives a slightly softer result but is more efficient. Fujifilm have opted for the CMOS in the Z1000EXR believing that it works better with the EXR processor.

Fujifilm's EXR sensor can be utilized in one of three ways by the photographer. There's a choice between shooting at full 16 megapixel resolution in High Resolution (HR) mode, or an 8 megapixel image in the Low Noise (SN) mode for shooting without flash in low light conditions, or the Dynamic Range (DR) mode to achieve an optimal balance between shadows and highlights. The latter offers five strengths ranging from 100-1600%. If you can't decide which is best for a chosen scene or subject, then just leave the camera on the scene-detecting EXR Automatic Mode and let it choose for itself. The Pro Low-light mode uses multi-bracketing technology, taking a series of four high sensitivity/low-noise shots in quick succession and combining them into an image with less noise than the single exposures.

Front	Front

Thanks to the 5x optical zoom of the Fujifilm FinePix Z1000EXR being internal, the body of the camera is very slim. It makes the camera easily pocketable and of course should a child get hold of it, there's no chance of them breaking the zoom barrel. All other buttons and functions except for the three controls on the top of the camera have been incorporated into the touch screen interface, so if you're a fan of external controls then this isn't the camera for you.

The build quality of the Z1000EXR is very good. The camera feels solid to hold and the large plate that covers the lens should provide exceptional protection. The only thinga we're disappointed in are located on the bottom of the camera - there's a cheap plastic tripod bush and the battery door is quite flimsy. Generally, higher specification cameras have a metal tripod bush and it's kind of like a status symbol with manufacturers. With regards to the battery door, it's not that problematic but it's not the easiest door to open and that gives us concern with long time usage.

Fujifilm have changed the way that their menus work these days. Before, it was a simple combination of shooting menu and set up menu with a separate playback menu in that mode. While it's technically the same at its base elements, the structure of it has changed so it seems more difficult to operate. The modes are now found by pressing the mode icon on the touchscreen in the top left corner. This menu remains in the top left regardless of the orientation although other modes will take different places when the camera is vertical. This menu is where you'll choose whether you want the camera in auto, scene recognition, EXR, touch & shoot, scenes, natural & flash or motion panorama.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

Recently Fujifilm released a new panoramic mode that allowed much easier alignment and stitching of pictures to create panoramas but it still wasn't as easy as the Sony Sweep Panorama. Motion Panorama is Fujifilm's answer to Sweep Panorama. It takes a series of images while you move the camera in the direction you want to record. It also features a yellow line to keep you aligned. The menu is still easy to use though, it's just evolved to a more advanced state of the extremely simple menu systems that they became famous for a few years ago.

The Z1000EXR has an extensive array of options in its Playback menu The picture is displayed in the centre of the touch screen with ten buttons down the sides of the picture in 2 groups of 5. From this point it's possible to favourite your pictures by giving them a star rating, search for pictures using date, face recognition information (faces have to have been registered in the camera database before this will work), favourites, scene mode, type of data or by upload mark (YouTube or Facebook).

Along with the camera, inside the box you'll find a rechargeable lithium ion battery and a dedicated charger which comes with a 3 pin attachment that slides on to the charger. The lack of lead could reduce the amount of places that it can be plugged in due to its size and shape. There's also a USB lead and small wrist strap to prevent the camera from being dropped. In the software package there's a paper based quick start guide, warranty booklet and on the driver CD is MyFinePix Studio for both Windows and Mac. The full owners manual is also on the disc.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 16 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 5.5Mb.

Image quality on the Fujifilm FinePix Z1000EXR digital compact camera is very good in real life situations. What we mean is that for everyday use, you'll find that the Z1000EXR gives cracking shots. We found that the metering, although good in most situations, did have trouble in complex light or with hard highlights and shadows in the frame. We tried using the dynamic range boost but it had little effect. We found that colours are recorded accurately in the Z1000EXR. Primary colours such as red and green are rich and nicely saturated. We're suckers for a good blue sky and we loved how the Fujifilm produced pictures with blue sky in.

Noise

The sensitivity on the Fujifilm FinePix Z1000EXR ranges from ISO100 to ISO6400. We're pleased as punch with the low ISO results. ISO100 is very smooth with no colour noise showing through at all in dark areas and there's nice sharpness to fine edges. We found a small amount of salt and pepper noise poking through at ISO400 which messes around with fine edges slightly and this problem gets worse at the ISO800 setting. However, we'd normally expect to see colour noise coming through at this stage but we can't. Green blobs of colour do show through at the ISO1600 setting but it's tolerable. Image detail has broken down severely at ISO3200 and colour noise starts to invade the mid range tones being seen most where darker parts overlap lighter tones. At ISO6400, the camera reduces the resolution to reduce noise but so far the camera has produced much better results than other similar cameras. What reducing the resolution does is keeps the noise performance akin to what the lower ISO3200 setting does.

ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Fujifilm FinePix Z1000EXR's 5x zoom lens provides a focal length of 28-140mm in 35mm terms, as demonstrated below.

28mm	140mm

Sharpening

As we mentioned before, CMOS sensors aren't as sharp as CCD sensors. However, we found that pictures were sharp enough although loading the pictures into Adobe Photoshop CS6 and using the sharpening tools did bring out the detailed areas of photographs a little better.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

We struggled to find any chromatic aberration on the pictures we took during the test which we are extremely pleased with.

Example 1 (100% Crop)	Example 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

The Z1000EXR has a close focusing performance of 9cm which isn't all that spectacular on paper. However taking a picture of a simple Compactflash card, we found that it filled the frame nicely. Centre sharpness is great although that sharpness does start to soften out at the edges.

Macro Shot	100% Crop

Flash

We found that in program mode with the ISO at a low setting to minimise noise, that the flash wouldn't compensate more to give a more balanced result. The only time it did this was in the natural light & flash mode in the program menu.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (28mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (28mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (140mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (140mm)

We found that the red-eye reduction feature on the Fujifilm FinePix Z1000EXR eliminated most red-eye in the picture.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red Eye Reduction	Red Eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

It seems that the Fujifilm FinePix Z1000EXR has an amazing noise reduction facility that can really be seen when using the night shot mode for shooting at night versus the program mode. In program, the camera doesn't automatically add the right amount of noise reduction because it doesn't analyse the picture like it does in the scene modes. Because of this, even at ISO100 we got a lot of noise due to the long exposure but the night scene shot is much smoother. However, the night scene mode also underexposed the image by a large margin. It was dusk in our test and the camera has made it look like night.

Night	Night (100% Crop)

Anti Shake

The Fujifilm FinePix F770EXR has an anti-shake mechanism, which allows you to take sharp photos at slower shutter speeds than other digital cameras. To test this, I took 2 handheld shots of the same subject with the same settings. The first shot was taken with anti shake turned off, the second with it turned on. Here are some 100% crops of the images to show the results. As you can see, with anti shake turned on, the images are much sharper than with anti shake turned off. This feature really does seem to make a difference and could mean capturing a successful, sharp shot or missing the opportunity altogether.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Anti Shake Off (100% Crop)	Anti Shake On (100% Crop)
1/10th / 25mm
1/8th / 500mm

EXR Modes

Fujifilm's EXR sensor can be utilized in one of three ways by the photographer. There's a choice between shooting at full 16 megapixel resolution in High Resolution (HR) mode, or an 8 megapixel image in the Low Noise (SN) mode for shooting without flash in low light conditions, or the Dynamic Range (DR) mode to achieve an optimal balance between shadows and highlights. The latter offers five strengths ranging from 100-1600%. If you can't decide which is best for a chosen scene or subject, then just leave the camera on the scene-detecting EXR Automatic Mode and let it choose for itself.

Resolution Priority	Resolution Priority (100% Crop)
High ISO & Low Noise	High ISO & Low Noise (100% Crop)
D-Range Priority	D-Range Priority (100% Crop)

Film Simulation Modes

The Fujifilm Finepix F770EXR offers 4 different film simulation modes to help replicate the look of your favourite film stock from the past.

Provia / Standard	Velvia / Vivid
Black & White	Sepia

Panorama Mode

The Fujifilm FinePix F770EXR allows you to take panoramic images very easily by 'sweeping' with the camera while keeping the shutter release depressed. The camera does all the processing and stitching, and there are three views available. The main problems are that the resulting image is of fairly low resolution - 1080 pixels high and 5760 pixels wide for the 360 degree image - moving objects are recorded as "ghost" images, and different lighting sources cause obvious vertical streaks to appear.

120 Degrees

Full-size Image

180 Degrees

Full-size Image

360 Degrees

Full-size Image

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Fujifilm FinePix Z1000EXR camera, which were all taken using the 16 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera / Turned On

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera / Turned On

Rear of the Camera / Shooting Mode Menu

Rear of the Camera / Shooting Menu

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

Fujifilm have concentrated on delivering great value for money with their recent compact cameras, and the new FinePix Z1000EXR is no exception. Less than £200 / $275 for a stylish yet advanced point and shoot with wi-fi connectivity and excellent image quality makes the Z1000EXR a real bargain, especially as street prices will inevitably be lower. We'd have liked to have seen Fujifilm go further with the wireless options, and there are a few design flaws such as the smooth exterior, tiny handgrip and flimsy battery compartment cover, but we're really nitpicking here.

The Z1000EXR is principally targeted at the younger, more fashion-conscious crowd who want to take and share pictures quickly and easily, and for the most part it will satisfy their needs. Being able to transfer your photos onto a smartphone, where they can be edited and shared in many different way, means that you no longer have to rely on a computer, although being able to upload them straight to any wi-fi network would have been the real icing on the cake.

We feel that the FinePix Z1000EXR would also suit a a keen amateur that simply wants a camera for fitting into a bag or pocket but doesn't want to compromise on image quality, as it delivers a lot more than its shiny exterior might at first suggest. The pictures we produced were very good with realistic colours and minimal noise. The zoom is only modest but using the camera, we never felt that it was lacking. The rest of the camera is built to a high standard and the only areas we didn't approve of were the battery that can be put in the compartment either way and the thin and award plastic cover that protects it.

In summary the Fujifilm FinePix Z1000EXR manages the tricky task of marrying style and substance, with the new wi-fi options making it the perfect partner to your smartphone. Given the affordable price-teg, there's little to quiblle about , earning the Z1000EXR our coveted Highly Recommended award.

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

Specifications

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