We attended Fujifilm Finepix's Z10fd launch party at the Fillmore here in New York and got an early look at Fujifilm's tweener-targeted point-and-shoot.
Aimed at the teenager growing up in the heyday of Web 2.0, Fujifilm seems to envision their neon-colored point-and-shoot as the centerpiece of their socially-networked lives. At the launch event for their Finepix Z10fd camera, featuring MTV-favorite rock bands The Bravery and Locksley (not to mention miniature hamburgers and hot dogs), Fujifilm made no bones about who their audience is. But does the hardware stand up to the needs of a 13-year-old with a MySpace addiction?
They've included a beam feature, using Infrared beams to transfer photos from one camera to another, also working with any Infrared beaming device, like a mobile phone. The "Blog mode" crops and resize photos in-camera, for instant uploading from a computer. "Auction mode" allows users to combine multiple images into one to quickly post to an auction site like eBay.
Of the four current Z-series models, the Z10fd certainly stands out the most. A brand new "Twin Ring" button structure on the back panel of the camera pairs with a curvy form factor to separate it from the sharp, crisp lines of the rest of the Z-series. The Z10fd also becomes one of only two Z-series cameras that are compatible with both SD and SDHC memory cards in addition to xD. It is also available in 7 colors, as opposed to the Z-series standard of 4.
The interface hasn't changed much from the standard Finepix menus, but the slideshow, scrapbook and micro thumbnail view options were probably the most interesting of the camera's features. The slideshow could be played with music, and both the scrap book and thumbnail views allowed us to view a lot more images than we'd ever imagined looking at on a camera's LCD screen. We'll wait to pass judgement on the images it took until we can shoot outside of a dark club and view our photos on a computer.
Spec-wise, the Z10fd is incredibly average; the 7.2 megapixel sensor, 3x optical zoom lens, VGA video and face detection can be found on countless other cameras. We liked that it had 54MB of internal memory, but the low ISO setting (max of ISO 1600) and the 2.5-inch LCD with only 150,000 pixels were disappointing.
Fujifilm seems to have attempted to streamline and simplify the proliferation of photographs between kids and their friends, but on first glance they seem to fall short. They seem to be pushing the youth angle really hard, and while they seem to have the marketing down, the technology is just the opposite: old. IR beaming is a slow, line-of-sight dependent transfer technology (where's the Bluetooth?). Rather than resizing photos in-camera for easy uploading once hooked up to a computer, why can't we have Wi-Fi to send the photos directly from the camera over the internet? These are all prevalent technologies, in no way unreasonable to expect from a camera being marketed the way the Z10fd is.
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Pros:
Easy to use, streamlined menus, inexpensive, supports xD as well as SD/SDHC
Cons:
Average image quality, little manual control, no video zooming | | |
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