Fuji FinePix F20 First Impressions Review

by Richard Baguley
Published on October 10, 2006

Navigation
Intro	Physical Tour
Components	Design / Layout
Modes	Control Options
Image Parameters	Connectivity / Extras
Overall Impressions	Conclusion

 

The full auto mode of the Fujifilm FinePix F20 puts the camera into a point-and-shoot mode where most of the important settings are controlled by the camera itself. This seems to do an effective job in our limited testing, setting the various controls to appropriate values.

Movie Mode
The movie mode of the F20 is basic, but adequate. Videos are recorded at resolutions of 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 pixels, both at 30 frames per second as Motion JPEG files. Mono sound is also recorded with the movies. The picture stabilization mode button is a bit deceiving. Most cameras allow an image stabilization mode to work in the movie mode, but the Fujifilm’s “picture stabilization” mode boosts ISO settings and quickens shutter speeds rather than shifting the image sensor or even digitally correcting hand shake. Thus, Fuji’s so-called “stabilization” can only happen while shooting still images – and even then it isn’t a true image stabilization system. The lack of an image stabilization system in the movie mode means that clips will catch a lot of bumps from normal hand shake. In the playback mode, movies can be clipped into two files. 
 

A good selection of drive modes are offered, although they aren’t particularly fast. The top-3 and final-3 record respectively the first or last of the frames after the shutter is pressed. There is also a long period mode that can record as many frames as will fit on the card. The first two modes can record a maximum of three frames at a speed of 2.2 frames per second, while the long period mode is limited to a rather pedestrian 0.7 frames per second.

Playback Mode
While the LCD screen is pretty bright, the low resolution doesn’t loan itself to playing back images that well. But it’s good enough for a casual viewing of images, and the playback mode is reasonably flexible. One or nine images can be viewed at once on a screen, and images can be added to a list of favorites and played back in a slideshow. This is a pretty basic slideshow, but it should suffice if you want to show off family photos to friends. Pictures can be protected and erased, although there is no way to quickly and easily scroll through a lot of pictures and select some for deletion and some to save. Images can be rotated and copied from the internal memory to a memory card or vice versa. Up to 30 seconds of audio can be attached to each file too. Videos can be split into two files with the camera’s Trimming feature.

Custom Image Presets
A wide selection of scene modes are on offer: the user gets to choose from Natural Light, Natural Light & Flash, Portrait, Landscape, Sport, Night, Fireworks, Sunset, Snow, Beach, Museum, Party, Flower Close-up and Text. The Natural Light & Flash mode is unique to Fujifilm FinePix digital cameras. This mode, also called the Dual Shot mode sometimes, snaps two pictures consecutively – one using the camera’s i-Flash system and one without. The camera saves both images so users can later decide which exposure looks best. The Fuji F20 also has a Picture Stabilization mode that has its own button to activate it on the back of the camera. This mode boosts the ISO anywhere up to 2000 and quickens shutter speeds, and sometimes uses the flash, to reduce blur. The title of the mode sounds deceivingly similar to an image stabilization system, which this camera does not have. The Fujifilm FinePix F20 does not have an optical or digital stabilization system; the Picture Stabilization mode is quite gimmicky and tries to attract consumers with its name.