Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR

Display (4.40)

The LCD is your run-of-the mill 3-inch, 230,000-dot screen, that can be set to one of 10 steps of brightness. It’s not as high-res as the 920,000-dot Sony T900 or 461,000-dot Canon SD970 IS screens, but serves well enough.

Pressing the display button alters the amount of information shown by the camera.

Flash (4.50)

Fujifilm rates the flash for up to 14.1-feet on auto ISO. It can be set to auto, forced, off or slow-synchro. When face detection is turned on, it switches to red-eye reduction for flash mode. Flash is placed directly below the shutter/zoom controls, which means it’s very easy to accidentally block. Shooting the flash against a blank wall, we were pleased by the evenness of it’s coverage, and the light drop off towards the edges was minimal.

Positioned next to the flash is a small autofocus assist lamp. This white LED is very bright, and helps substantially when focusing in dark settings.

Lens (5.25)

The lens has 5x optical zoom, with a focal length of 6.4mm to 32mm (equivalent to a 28-140mm in 35mm photography). At the wide-angle end of the spectrum, the aperture range runs f/3.3 to f/9, at telephoto it’s f/5.1 to f/14.

Zoom Ratio Examples
6.4 mm	14.0 mm	32.0 mm

Battery (6.00)

The rechargeable Lithium ion battery is rated for 230 shots per charge. This isn’t fantastic battery life, but it isn’t too bad. This number feels more or less accurate, though the camera does have the annoying habit of losing its last bar of battery charge much quicker than the others.

Memory (4.00)

Fujifilm has done something clever with the memory card slot on this camera. While the company has long supported the increasingly antiquated xD memory card format, it has also developed a single slot which can accept either xD cards or the far more practical SD/SDHC card format. We wish Olympus (the other major user of xD cards) would adopt this solution too.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs (1.00)

The F200WXR has a single proprietary I/O port, from which a single cable is used for both AV and USB functions. It’s a highly unusual cable, with connectors for both types of plug, and would be difficult to replace should it get lost.