Fujifilm FinePix V10

Connectivity
Software
Fujifilm FinePix Viewer software comes packaged with the FinePix V10.

Jacks, ports, plugs
The Fujifilm FinePix V10 has covered sockets on each of its sides. The power adaptor hooks into the left side while the A/V and USB 2.0 cables connect into a multi-port on the right side. The A/V jack is NTSC and PAL selectable from the setup menu.

Direct Print Options
This digital camera is PictBridge compatible and uses the DPOF system to create print orders. When users are scrolling through pictures, they can push the ‘F’ button to add pictures to the print order. Users can select which prints and how many copies of each print to make. In the playback mode, users can trim and rotate pictures before selecting them for printing. Those are the only in-camera editing options available though.

Battery
The V10 comes with a Fujifilm NP-40 rechargeable battery that is very skinny and doesn’t add much weight to the camera. There is a power adaptor included with this model and it charges the battery within the camera body. The battery life on the V10 isn’t anything to dance and sing about; it lasts 170 shots. At a time when many compacts are getting 400 shots out of their batteries, 170 doesn’t look very good. That is the price to be paid for the bright 3-inch LCD screen.

Memory
There is no internal memory on the Fujifilm FinePix V10, but there is a slot by the battery compartment for xD-Picture cards. The camera comes packaged with a 16 MB card, but this is only enough to hold 5 or 6 full resolution shots. The V10 accepts xD cards up to 1 GB.

Other features
Games  - The Fujifilm FinePix V10’s slogan is, "The Game Just Changed." Its gaming features are highly marketed, but the actual games are buried within the playback menu. There are four games available. The Photo Puzzle game takes the picture that was last shot and divides it into about 20 squares and scatters it about. Users must scroll around and press the Menu/OK button to move the pieces into their proper places. The Block Buster game turns you into a tennis ball machine that shoots out tiny yellow balls. These yellow balls shoot outward and bounce on blocks in front of you. When the balls bounce on these blocks, they reveal the last exposure beneath them. The Maze game is fairly selfexplanatory. You are turned into a tiny chick and you must go through the maze to the mother chicken while avoiding a single slow-moving ghost. This wasn’t very challenging, even for me (I’ve never really played video games). Oh yes, and the picture that was last taken randomly sits in the corner of a puzzle. A Shooting game is available for those more violent users. Users are transformed into a spaceship that battles other spaceships with its wimpy gunfire. It would make sense that there are levels of difficulty to this game, but I kept getting blown up before I could figure that out. The navigational control was definitely not designed for the games; it was designed to fit in a very tight spot. The four games are fun, but the concept of merging video games with digital cameras is still a little foreign. It almost turns the digital camera into an entertainment device instead of an imaging technology. Still, desperate parents will love handing the V10 to their kids in the doctor’s office or wherever silence is preferred.