Fujifilm FinePix S6000fd

Manual Control Options
The Fujifilm FinePix S6000fd has Manual, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Program modes along with a full set of manual ISO, white balance, focus, and other options. Read on for the details, but the general outlook on manual control is good.

Focus
Auto Focus
The FinePix S6000fd is outfitted with a contrast-type through-the-lens auto focus system. It can be controlled in several different ways, selectable from the left side of the lens. There is a small switch that moves from Single to Continuous to Manual, much like similar controls found on Nikon DSLRs.

The auto focus frame can be set to Center, Multi, or Area within the shooting menu, and only when the Face Detection is turned off. The Face Detection auto focus system is functional when its designated button is pushed in. It calls up some interesting technology. The camera can recognize up to 10 faces in one frame as long as they are all facing the camera. The hardware-based technology shows green brackets around a "primary face," which seems to be the closest and largest face in the frame. Others are framed in white brackets.

Not only does it recognize the faces, but it tracks them too. It does a good job of recognizing faces quickly and focusing on them. The auto focus system had a slight lag in the movie mode, but that doesn’t show in the still image shooting modes. The only lag when taking pictures occurs when the flash pops up for the first time. The reliable auto focus system can focus as close as 0.4 inches to 3.3 ft in the super macro mode, 4 inches to 9.8 ft in the wide macro mode, 3-9.8 ft in the telephoto macro mode, and 1.3 ft to infinity normally.

Manual Focus 
When the manual focus mode is selected on the left side of the lens, users can focus with the ring surrounding the lens barrel. The live preview can be magnified in the center with the magnifying glass button. This view looks fine on the high-resolution LCD screen but looks terrible on the electronic viewfinder.

ISO
This digital camera’s ISO settings are available from the "F" button on the camera body. The Fujifilm FinePix S6000fd has 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and 3200 manual settings along with an automatic setting. Fujifilm included noise reduction technology, but its effectiveness can’t be fully evaluated on the show floor of course. I magnified a picture taken with the ISO 3200 setting and it didn’t look very good though. The image looked like it’d been drawn on a piece of paper, dropped in a puddle, and dried in the sun. The edges looked fuzzy and the image was speckled and slightly discolored. My eyes could have been fooled though, so check back for a full review. The S6000fd comes with a Picture Stabilization mode that uses the higher ISO sensitivities along with quick shutter speeds to reduce blur. This highly marketed mode will likely produce more noise than a mode using an optical image stabilization system.

White Balance
The Fujifilm FinePix S6000fd has the following white balance options available from the shooting menu: Automatic, Manual, Shade, Fluorescent Daylight, Fluorescent Warm White, Fluorescent Cool White, and Incandescent. The manual white balance is easy to set with on-screen directions, but the colors still look a bit off.

Exposure
Photographers who want to adjust the exposure themselves will be pleased to know that the Fujifilm FinePix S6000fd allows control over the shutter speed and aperture, along with exposure compensation and such. A typical +/- 2 exposure compensation range is available in the typical 1/3 increments. The problem with this is that users must hold down the button with the index finger while scrolling with the thumb. There is a bracketing mode accessible in the burst mode options, and its intervals can be adjusted in the shooting menu. For users who want a close eye on the exposure in the preview, a histogram can be viewed with the Disp/Back button.

Metering
The shooting menu also houses the metering options – Multi, Spot, and Average – complete with a live view if you can see through the overlaid text. The Fujifilm S6000fd uses a 256-zone through-the-lens metering system that seems to work well.

Shutter Speed
The 30-1/4000th of a second shutter speed range can be accessed in the Manual and Shutter Speed Priority modes. In both modes, the shutter speed is changed by scrolling up and down with the multi-selector. The shutter speed range is decent on the S6000fd but some users may wish there was a bulb setting.

Aperture
The aperture can be adjusted in the Aperture Priority and Manual modes. In the priority mode, it is adjusted with the multi-selector much like the shutter speed. In the Manual mode, though, the exposure compensation button must be held down while simultaneously scrolling up and down with the multi-selector. The maximum aperture available on the Fujinon lens is f/2.8 in wide and f/4.9 in telephoto. The aperture can be adjusted in 1/3 increments for 13 steps up to f/11. This is a decent range that should suffice.