Fujifilm FinePix HS10

Viewfinder (6.25)

The HS10 offers both an electronic viewfinder and an LCD screen. The viewfinder shows exactly the same content as the LCD screen, but is a lot more visible than the screen in bright light. The viewfinder has a resolution of the 200k pixels, slightly lower than the screen. It is important to clarify that this is not an optical viewfinder like you get on an SLR:it shows the image from the sensor, not the view through the lens.

The camera automatically switches between the screen and viewfinder, based on the activation of the face sensor next to the viewfinder. We found that this was sometimes triggered by the hand or other object passing in front of the viewfinder, which is kind of irritating if you are reaching for the controls when using the screen. If required, this sensor can be disabled and a button next to the viewfinder used to switch between the two.

Display (4.65)

On the back of the camera body is a 3-inch, 230k pixel LCD screen. While this is a good size, it is rather low resolution, which gives images a rather blocky look. It is bright, though, and is visible in anything by direct sunlight.

The screen is articulated, so it can be tilted up 90 degrees or down to about 70 degrees, which makes it much easier to shoot while holding the camera above or below the head.

Flash (6.00)

The built-in flash of the HS10 is a small pop-up unit that sits in front of the viewfinder. It is released by pressing a button on the left side, but this has to be done manually: the flash does not automatically pop up. We found that the small flash was quite powerful: it was able to illuminate objects up to about 15 feet out.

In addition, a hot shoe on the top of the camera allows you to attach a more powerful flash. This is a standard flash connector, so it can be used with most third-party flash units. Fuji does not offer a dedicated external flash for this camera.

Lens (17.00)

The lens of the HS10 has an incredible 30x zoom range, starting from a very wide 24mm equivalent out to a very long 720mm zoom. That means it could capture everything from a wide landscape down to a close up shot of a footballer from the stands.

This long zoom length has a downside, though; the lens itself is rather large, especially when set to the maximum zoom length, where it protrudes to about 5 inches from the camera body.

Zoom Ratio Examples
4.2 mm	24.9 mm	126.0 mm

Battery (6.00)

The HS10 is powered by 4 AA batteries, which can be either disposable, NiCad or NiMH types. The latter two rechargeable types have to be charged outside of the camera: they cannot be charged within the camera body. A set of 4 disposable batteries are included with the camera.

Memory (3.25)

Images and video taken by this camera can be stored in two locations: the 46 MB of internal memory, or SD/SDHC cards. this camera is not compatible with the newer SDXC standard, which allows for cards that can hold up to 2TB of data. Neither can it be used with xD-Picture cards, despite Fuji being one of the originators of this format.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs (3.50)

There are two ports under a panel on the left side of the camera body: a mini HDMI port and a combination USB and analog A/V output. Cables for the latter are included to connect to a USB port or analog display, but no HDMI cables are included with this camera.