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Details at a glance
Megapixels: 5.1
Optical Zoom: 3x
Digital Zoom: 5.7x
LCD: 2.5 inches
Storage: xD
We clicked with
Design, build quality, low light performance, fill flash Shots in the dark
Hard to override auto controls, xD card is very fiddly, hard to hold with two hands Links
More Fujifilm information
www.fujifilm.co.uk
Price Comparison:
Fujifilm FinePix Z3
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It's tiny, it's slinky and everything about it oozes design right down to the box it comes in. The one Fujifilm sent us was also a rather attractive pink colour. It's pretty hard not to call this a girls' camera. Before anybody accuses me of prejudice I'd better point out that the press release that came with the camera is titled “sociable, stylish and reliable - a ladies' favourite”. I'm sure that Fujifilm will be happy to sell this to guys too (though they may want to choose the silver or metallic blue versions) but make no mistake - they are targeting women with this camera.
Features
Fujifilm makes it clear that this camera is designed for “people pictures” in dark environments and to a large extent, the feature set backs that up. You get the usual beach, snow, museum etc modes we've come to expect from Fujifilm but there are also a couple of innovative ideas under its sliding metal front.
High sensitivity
Many compact cameras limit their ISO to a maximum of 400. The reason for this is simple - in general higher ISO = more noise. For a camera to be taken seriously as a low light camera ISO 400 isn't going to cut it. You would want at least 800 ISO. Fortunately the Fujifilm Z3 is equipped with a very healthy ISO 1600. That's very impressive - but don't forget that from ISO 400 to ISO 1600 is only 2 stops. If a picture needs 1/4s at ISO 400 then it needs 1/16 at ISO 1600.
To make sure that ISO 1600 is as noise free as possible, the “Real Photo Processor II” uses “enhanced double noise reduction” to give the cleanest pictures it can.
Intelligent flash
This isn't a new idea. If you use a standard flash to take a shot of a person in a dark environment then the best you usually get is a correctly exposed person and a pitch black background. What you more often get is a washed out person as the flash completely overpowers the foreground and a pitch black background where the light falls off. There are ways around this with slower shutter speeds and reduced flash power. The Fujifilm Z3 promises to fix this problem automatically to give natural skin tones along with a clear background. See my comments in the “on test” section for how well this works.
Dual shooting mode
And now for a completely new feature…dual shooting mode takes two shots with one press of the shutter button. One without flash and then one with. Both pictures are displayed side by side on the screen and then saved. This is such a simple idea but a great one. If you're uncertain whether to use flash or not then try both and see what you get. Obviously you could mimic this with most cameras but not as quickly and elegantly as on the Z3. Usefully the flash picture is the second shot so your subject won't be so startled by the flash that they spoil the non-flash shot.
Handling
Before we get to the camera - let's talk about the box it comes in. Boxes are pretty simple, right? They are a bit of cardboard that holds all the bits together. The box for the Z3 is a little bit different. Slide the tray one way and you see your gorgeous new camera and a flap slides out the other way to tell you how good it is. Slide it the other way and there are all your accessories and another flap telling you that you bought the right camera. This is a tiny detail but you can imagine the marketing team wanting to plant the thought in your head “if they take this much care with the box….”. It's completely different but the only packaging I've seen with this amount of styling is an iPod box - and you can bet that's not coincidental.
Once out of the box, the Fujifilm Z3 is very pretty indeed. Credit card sized and thin without being fragile. It's going to slip beautifully into your Prada handbag or your Joe's jeans if you're slumming it. Don't waste your time looking for a power button (OK, I did. A few times) - the front of the camera slides away to reveal the lens and turn the camera on. Just slide it back when you've finished. Everything is pretty well where you'd expect it and fairly easy to use if you have smallish hands.
One nice idea is the “F” button. This gives you instant access to commonly used features such as ISO, image size and colour mode. Colour mode is a little odd - the choices are normal, “chrome” and black and white. The first and last are fairly self explanatory. “Chrome” boosts contrast and saturation to give more vivid shots of landscapes and flowers. If you are used to film then think “velvia” and you're in the right area - it's a good way to make portraits look horrible. You should also know that you can only change the ISO if you are using “manual” mode. This is also the only mode that will let you change functions such as white balance and exposure compensation - you get the idea that Fujifilm designed this camera to be used in auto pretty much all the time.
Image quality
This is a very interesting one. The Fujifilm Finepix Z3 is designed to excel as a low light camera so I'm going to split my remarks about image quality into two sections. In the first, I'll talk about “normal” shooting - by which I mean general scenes up to about ISO 400. In the second, I'm going to talk about it specifically at ISO over 400 and mention the low light flash abilities. In each section, I'll give it a mark for image quality out of 10. At the bottom of this review you'll see a single mark for image quality which is simply the average of the two - you may choose to use either the low light or general shooting mark instead or weight the average yourself.
Normal shooting
The Z3 does rather a good job at a range of “normal” pictures. The lens seems plenty sharp enough and doesn't have any major faults. There's a little distortion at its very widest setting, but nothing that would really trouble you in everyday shooting. By current standards, 5MP could be considered a little on the small side but the camera is capable of some very nice looking A4 prints.
Exposures are also pretty good with most general scenes returning a very pleasing picture. The dual exposure mode can work well if you're not sure whether to use flash or not. However, on a number of shots with high contrast scenes the main area came back a little underexposed. This isn't unusual (the camera has to balance a bright sky and dark foreground) and can usually be dealt with by exposure compensation. On most compacts this isn't a big deal but on the Z3 exposure comp only works in “manual” mode. If you are shooting in “auto” mode (and the camera performs very well in this mode most of the time) you are 10 button presses from adding +1 exposure compensation.
Images are also very slightly over sharpened for my taste which gives some subjects a slight “cut out” look to them. There is no option on the Z3 to turn down sharpening. Colours are rich and bright. Like most compacts the Z3 increases the saturation a little but this is by no means overdone and most subjects look just slightly better than a completely faithful reproduction would be.
Overall I'd give the Z3 7 out of 10 for image quality for general subjects.
Low light
So... what's it like when the lights go down? The answer is very good. It's not perfect but it's better than any other compact I've seen at low light shooting.
The intelligent flash actually works quite well. Taking pictures in a dim restaurant with flash I got some beautiful pictures. The main subject is nicely illuminated and the background is very pleasant because it has ambient light on it. If you've ever used slow sync flash then you'll be familiar with the effect. However, the Z3 seems to be able to pull off this trick using a 1/60s shutter speed. By using a combination of higher than usual ISO and smart flash the Fujifilm Z3 delivers pictures that are a world away from the usual bleached subject and black background you associate with low light social pictures. You need to make sure you are about arm's length from your subject and that the background doesn't contain a huge contrast in light but usually this is what you would get in a social setting anyway. It's worth mentioning here that the flash is also very good at fill flash in bright daylight. Even taking macro shots of white flowers, the flash was able to output just enough power to remove a bit of shadow without overpowering the subject.
Without flash the camera is still pretty good at low light photography. ISO 1600 works well but the Z3 applies some very aggressive noise reduction to make the picture look as smooth as possible. This can cause some very odd looking areas where genuine rough texture in the picture has been severely smoothed. All in all it's not a bad job of high ISO for a compact. The “graphiti” pictures in the sample pictures were taken at ISO 1600. I have A4 prints of them and the quality is good but not great. At a smaller print size and on my screen they look very nice indeed. I'd be very happy with these at A5/6X4 though and that's what I'd expect most people to print low light pictures at. If you need a camera that will shoot at ISO 1600 to produce prints to fill a wall then you'll have to look elsewhere (and spend a LOT more money - the Canon 5D is the only camera that springs to mind). If you restrain yourself either to using flash or to printing at 6X4 for very low light pictures then the Fujifilm Z3 certainly does the job better than any other compact we've tested.
You also need to remember that ISO 1600 is pretty good but really doesn't allow you to take pictures when it's pretty dark. In a dimly lit restaurant, ISO 1600 was giving a shutter speed of 1/4s - and that's too slow for people. You'll need to use flash.
For low light use I'd give the Fujifilm Z3 a cautious 9/10. You may find the noise reduction a little too much (and there's no way to turn it down or off) but currently no other compact will get you better pictures in low light.
Shooting
The Fujifilm Z3 isn't the fastest camera around by any means. It is ready to go about 3.5 seconds after you slide the brushed metal cover back. Shot to shot time is pretty good too - I managed 10 shots in 20 seconds which is about 0.5 fps. Shutter lag is pleasantly low though and so despite the shot to shot time being slow it's unlikely you'll miss too much of the action. Even though start up isn't the fastest around you may find the camera ready to shoot faster than some of its rivals. That's because rather than fiddling for a power button you simply slide the front plate back. With practise you can do this one handed without even looking.
What's not to like
I already mentioned that Fujifilm seem to want you to use this camera on auto all the time. That's fine for most purposes but when you want to take a little more control the options are either lacking or buried in a menu so deep that you will never find them in time. Also, some of the buttons don't always do what you expect. I wanted to turn the flash on but found the flash button just didn't do anything. After a moment's thought, I realised that I had the camera in “natural light” mode and that this disabled the flash. I would expect the flash button to turn on flash whatever the mode (or possibly even warn me why it wasn't working).
You can only really use this camera one handed - there just isn't a comfortable place to hold it with your left hand that doesn't block the lens. This probably fits with the target market but you'll always get sharper shots using two hands. It goes without saying that this camera is really not designed for people with big hands.
Camera specification
| Mega-pixels: | 5.1 |
Photo: | JPEG |
| Optical Zoom: | 3x |
RAW: | No |
| Digital Zoom: | 5.7x |
Aperture: | f/3.5-4.2 |
| LCD: | 2.5 inch |
Focal Length: | equiv. 36-108mm |
| Dimensions: | 92.7 x 56.7 x 27.8mm |
Shutter: | 4 sec to 1/1000 |
| Weight: | 130g |
Exposure: | ISO 64 to 1600 |
| Storage: | xD |
Movie: | 640X480@30fps |
| Int. Mem: | n/a |
Battery: | Li-ion D-Li8 |
| Interface: | USB 2.0, AV |
PictBridge: | Yes |
