Point and shoot cameras are the bread and butter of all digicam manufacturers and there is a huge variety of them available in the market at this point of time. FujiFilm has also got one - the FinePix AV200, which has an impressive set of features for an entry level camera. This 14 MP camera has got 3X optical zoom with digital image stabilization. Features such as Smile Shutter, Face Detection and Blink Detection are also present along with eight shooting modes. This camera also supports movie recording in 720p HD resolution. We have reviewed this camera, so read on to find out how well it performs.
Bundle
Bundle
- FujiFilm FinePix AV200
- 2x AA type Alkaline batteries
- Hand strap
- USB cable
- CD-ROM
- User manual
The bundle is fairly sparse to reduce the cost. The battery charger lets you charge the battery separately, while you can also charge it using the USB 2.0 cable.
Design and Build
The FujiFilm FinePix AV200 is a simple point and shoot camera meant for entry level users who want the camera to be as easy to use as possible. The camera has a tiny rounded body made of polycarbonate and seems to be built well. The size is as small as a clenched fist; naturally, the camera feels tiny in your hands. But holding it for long is not a problem, especially because the camera is incredibly lightweight at just 168 g.
The FujiFilm FinePix AV200 is a simple point and shoot camera meant for entry level users who want the camera to be as easy to use as possible. The camera has a tiny rounded body made of polycarbonate and seems to be built well. The size is as small as a clenched fist; naturally, the camera feels tiny in your hands. But holding it for long is not a problem, especially because the camera is incredibly lightweight at just 168 g.
The wide-angle lens is a Fujinon f=5.7 - 17.1 equivalent to 32 - 96 mm on a 35mm camera with 3x optical zoom. The lens is protected by an automatic cover, which opens when the camera is switched on and closes when it is switched off. The Xenon flash is placed near the top center side away from where the shutter button is placed, which is a smart placement because it reduces the chances of your fingers accidentally coming in the way of the flash. A tracking/AF sensor is situated just below the flash. A microphone is located just besides the lens in the lower part.
The top of the camera has just two controls - shutter button and power button. The large shutter button is towards the right and is large enough for comfortable use. The smaller power button is placed just besides this button.
The back of the camera has a bright 2.7-inch LCD screen with 230,000 pixels and an aspect ratio of 4:3. Being such a small camera, there is no optical viewfinder, so you have to depend on the LCD all the time. A rubberized thumb-rest is provided on the right for comfortable holding while taking snaps. Most of the controls available in this camera are located at the back. The zoom in and zoom out buttons are present near the top right and are comfortably easy to control and quite noiseless. There is a jog dial to sift through the captured photos or videos. The jog dial also lets you select different settings such as macro mode, flash, delete, Electronic Exposure values and delayed shutter, which can be chosen for 2 seconds or 10 seconds. You can choose other settings too by pressing the OK button at the centre, selecting the setting and then pressing OK again. Most of the settings such as scenes and shooting modes are inside the camera menus and you need to choose them from here as this camera does not feature a mode dial to choose them unlike in more expensive cameras. There is a DISP/BACK button, which sets the display mode (such as grid guides on LCD), or even lets you go back a menu. Just besides this button, there is a playback button to enter playback mode and view captured content on the LCD.
At the bottom of the camera, a flap with a latch houses the battery compartment and the memory card slot. This camera supports SD and SDHC memory cards. Two standard AA batteries power the cameras and this comes in handy instead of the Lithium Ion batteries because you can simply buy them at any shop anywhere if the camera happens to run out of battery power. The sieve present at the bottom is the speaker through which you can hear sound when you playback the captured videos. Lastly, there is a centrally located threaded tripod mount socket. This is made of plastic, so must be used with caution as it is not durable like one made of metal.
A proprietary socket is present on one side of the camera. This socket is to plug in the USB or A/V cable. There is also provision to attach a wrist strap to the camera at the side.
Features and Performance
The FinePix AV200 features 3x optical zoom, which is not much, but we don't expect too much from a point and shoot camera at this price range.
The FinePix AV200 features 3x optical zoom, which is not much, but we don't expect too much from a point and shoot camera at this price range.
There are several scene modes to choose from, such as SR Auto (selects optimum camera settings for certain modes), Auto (full automatic mode), P (automatic mode with programmed setting), Movie (for recording movies with sound), Natural Light & with Flash (takes two photographs continuously, one with and one without flash and merges them), Natural Light (retains natural ambience without flash), Portrait (portrait with soft overall tone and beautiful skin tones), Baby (suitable to photograph babies and for natural skin tone without flash), Smile & Shoot (detects smile and shoots automatically), Landscape (for scenic shots), Motion Panorama (panoramic photographs by three consecutive shots), Sport (to shoot fast moving subjects), Night (reduces effects of camera shake with high ISO setting in poor light conditions), Night (Tripod) (does the same as the previous mode, but using long exposures instead of high ISO), Fireworks (effective to shoot fireworks with slow shutter speed), Sunset (shoots sunset views with more vivid colors), Snow (suitable for shooting in snowing conditions), Beach (for crisp, clear shots on the beach), Party (suitable for shooting indoor events), Flower (takes vivid shots of flowers), Text (suitable for shooting documents for clear lettering).
5-Rupees coin shot from a distance of just 1 cm with an exposure of 1/30 sec at ISO 800 in fluorescent light
Pink flowers shot from a distance of 15 cm with an exposure of 1/125 second at ISO 125 in daylight
Red flowers shot from a distance of 15 cm with an exposure of 1/170 second at ISO 100 in daylight
White flower shot from a distance of 15 cm with an exposure of 1/110 second at ISO 100 in daylight
Yellow flower shot from a distance of 15 cm with an exposure of 1/125 second at ISO 100 in daylight
In addition to Auto ISO, ISO sensitivity modes of 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200 can be selected in Programmable mode. At ISO 3200, the image size is automatically reduced to 3 MP to curb high noise introduced at that ISO setting. In general, you get good results up to ISO 200 if you zoom in to see the details, but noise increases noticeably with anything above that. But if you want to get a postcard size photo print, good results are obtained even at ISO 800.
You can see that the sharpness decreases and noise increases as the ISO value is increased; this is normal.
Fringing is almost not noticeable, but the edges of objects are not well defined as can be seen in the above photograph which has been cropped at 100 percent size.
Here are a few more shots.
ISO 100 with 1/110 second exposure in daylight
ISO 100 with 1/120 second exposure in daylight
ISO 100 with 1/120 second exposure was used for this outdoor photograph
ISO 100 with 1/60 second exposure was used for this outdoor photograph
As noted earlier, the camera supports recording 720p HD video at 30 fps with stereo sound. Movies are recorded in 1280x720 AVI format. Video quality is good with natural colors and crisp picture quality and sounds. We were surprised to learn that optical zoom works during movie shooting. We were even more surprised to find that even autofocus works while shooting movies. Now the problem is, that the camera mutes the audio whenever you use optical zoom while shooting video. While it does not do so when using digital zoom, this is not really usable because it is a stepped zoom, rather than smooth continuous. So you may want to avoid zooming while shooting movies unless it is really needed.
Being a low cost camera, it lacks optical image stabilization, but it does come with digital image stabilization, which also does a decent job at reducing the chances of blurry images due to camera shake.
It features Autofocus with tracking, which means that once you fixate the focus of the camera on a subject, the camera will follow it anywhere it moves, as long as it is in the field of view. There are other notable features such as Face detection and Smile Shutter, which detects the subject's smile and clicks photo automatically at the right moment. There is even a Blink Detection function which detects if the subject blinked when the shot was taken and sounds a warning so that you can take one more shot. There is also a Picture Search function which lets you search for a photograph by Face, by Scene or by Date. Photos and videos can also be uploaded to YouTube and Facebook with the processing taking place within the camera itself. The images or clips are uploaded when you connect the camera to the PC.
The camera captures surprisingly good color and details with no signs of saturation. Automatic focusing is fast and more often accurate than not. The minimum time between two consecutive shots is 2.2 seconds, while it becomes 3.6 seconds when flash is used. It does not allow you to choose aperture or shutter speed even in programmable mode. When using alkaline batteries, the camera can shoot up to 180 photographs, while it can shoot up to 480 when NiMH batteries are used.
Verdict
The FujiFilm FinePix AV200 is an excellent point and shoot camera for what it offers at the price. The photo quality is decent, though there is noticeable noise, but we didn't notice it even when we printed A4 size photo prints. Digital image stabilization works fairly well and reduces the effects of camera shake. Therefore, for all practical purposes, this point and shoot camera delivers good usable photo quality. It is light and easy to use even for beginners. The lack of manual controls is actually a good thing in such cameras as the user is not overwhelmed with control functionality they may know nothing about. The camera is also able to shoot movies with sound at 720p HD resolution with continuous automatic focusing, and you can use optical zoom too. Photos and videos can also be uploaded to YouTube and Facebook with the processing taking place within the camera itself.
There were a few cons we noticed in this camera. Shooting in the Macro mode requires you to place objects at a minimum distance of 15 cm from the camera lens, which is too far for this shooting mode and you lose a lot of finer detail. Another problem is that the audio gets muted when you use optical zoom, which makes it unusable. The Motion Panorama mode seldom works as it is supposed to, because the motion sensor often makes error in detecting motion of the camera.
The FujiFilm FinePix AV200 is available for an MRP of Rs. 5,499, which is a good price for what you are getting. While this is still a good camera to buy, we would rather advise you to go for its sibling, the AV100 instead. The reason is that, the AV100 has similar specs as the AV200 with only the sensor size being different at 12 MP instead of 14 MP. It is still able to do everything that the AV200 does, including recording 720p HD movies, and the slightly lower sensor size actually works to its advantage because it results in lower noise in images. Also, the AV100 is a thousand bucks cheaper than the AV200.
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