Fujifilm FinePix HS10

The Fujifim FinePix HS10 is a powerful camera with an incredible 30x zoom lens and a number of useful special shooting modes. And it does so without much compromise, shooting images with good color and low noise. But it is far from perfect; the same 30x zoom lens that provides everything from a very wide angle to long zoom shots makes it a big, bulky camera that could weight you down. The performance of this lens also breaks down at the wide and telephoto ends of the zoom range, with images becoming noticeably soft at the edges of the frame.

We also found that, although the images are low in noise at the lower ISO settings, they do get a little noisy at the higher settings, including the maximum ISO 6400 that the camera offers. There is also a lot of noise reduction going on in the images, which means that high ISO images have weak color and little detail. Still, it is nice to have the option to crank up the ISO when you need it, and the advanced low light shooting mode also produces nice results by taking 4 images in quick succession and stacking them together.

The macro shooting features of this camera are also impressive, with the super macro mode allowing you to shoot to about 1cm in front of the lens.

The video that the HS10 shoots is also a little disappointing, with weak color and detail, despite being shot at Full HD (1920 by 1440 pixel) resolution. You also don’t get much control over the video: although the camera offers extensive features for tweaking color when shooting still images, this gets thrown out of the window with video: you can only use the auto white balance mode. The high-speed videos are also a little disappointing, looking noisy, blocky and very low in resolution. You also need a lot of light; the 1000fps mode videos come out looking dull and dark even in bright sunlight.

But these issues aside, the HS10 does offer a lot of features for the price, and is more flexible than an SLR: an SLR would require 2 or 3 lenses to have this zoom range and macro shooting ability. If you are happy to live with the fixed lens, the usage issues and the large size of the camera, this is a good pick for a shooter who wants to shoot wide, to shoot close, shoot in low light and shoot video as well without carrying a lot of kit around.