Fuji Finepix Z20 fd Review

The Fuji Finepix Z20fd is one of the cheapest pocket cameras from a well known brand. It is also very lightweight. The Finepix Z20fd comes in a variety of different colours including black, red and pink.

The three main reasons for buying are likely to be low price, ease of use and the small size of the camera.

Outdoor 1 (Medium Zoom)
This photo lacks definition when compared to most other pocket digital cameras. The reason for this is likely to be a combination of factors including trying to squeeze a lot of pixels onto a small sensor and the lens being of lower quality.

Outdoor 2 (No Zoom)
If all you are looking for is small, snapshot size photos or to be able to email photos to friends or to post photos on the web then picture quality is o.k. If you want to create larger prints then you are like to notice a lack of definition in the shots. Purple fringing could also be an issue where the light source catches the edge of reflective objects.

Outdoor 3 (Maximum Zoom)
This is another example of a lack of sharpness in this set of test photos. The corners of the photo also have dark areas showing.

Outdoor 4 (Building)
Focusing is below my expectations even when taking the price of the Finepix Z20fd into account. Most cameras are able to do a pretty good job of at least locking onto the brickwork in the centre of this picture. This camera struggles to even achieve that. Darkness is also creeping into the corners once more.

Outdoor Portrait
Even when working close in the Finepix Z20fd can find the going tough. In this instance there is quite a bit of noise showing in the photo. This reduces the clarity of the shot.

Indoor Portrait with Flash
A large proportion of the flash light appears to be centered on the forehead. This gives us an uneven spread of light leaving the corners of the photo and areas of the hair dark. As you will see the uneven light increases the chance of unsightly shadows. Other cheap digital cameras tend to do a better job.

Indoor Portrait without Flash
When looking at some of the landscape style shots I noticed the corners of the shots could be darker. This suggests a weakness in the lens. This indoor shot taken without flash really highlights the problem. Noise is an issue here too.

Colours
The colours are an area where I don't have an issue. As with other Fuji digital cameras they are quite powerful and blues in particular show up strongly. On the whole the effect works well, especially with the landscape style shots.

Macro
The macro shot is the best of my test shots by quite some distance. In fact I would go as far as to say that taking the price of the Finepix Z20fd into account the camera does very well.

ISO 400 and ISO 1600
If you push up the ISO setting purple fringing as well as noise becomes a problem. Even when leaving ISO on auto I have found noise creeping into some of my test shots.

Overall
The Finepix Z20fd is probably the cheapest pocket camera around with a bit of style, but picture quality does fall short. The lack of sharpness may not be a bog issue with 6 x 4 inch prints or even 7 x 5 inch, but I would personally buy a camera where the picture quality is better.

A single photo took 0.44 seconds. This is a little slower than standard. Five photos took a respectable 13.9 seconds. With flash turned on times were similar: 0.59 seconds for a single photo and 16.04 seconds for five.

It took 2.69 seconds to turn on the Finepix Z20fd and take the first picture. This is inline with other similar cameras.

You can compare this camera to other models by taking a look at the Shutter Lag Comparison Table.

This is one of the smallest digital cameras around. Fuji has added a slight curve to the top and bottom of the camera to avoid the standard rectangular look. It is available in blue, green, white, pink, blue and black.

91.3 x 56.3 x 18.8mm

111g

Lithium ion (NP-45). Battery and charger supplied as standard.

Fuji has built in 45mb of storage. This is enough to get you started with room for around 24 photos. It is compatible with xD, SD and SDHC cards.

Click here to save money on SD cards..

The Finepix Z20fd has less features than most digital cameras. The upside of this is it makes it very easy to use.

Ease of use - size

Picture quality

The Olympus FE-20 may lack some of the looks the Finepix Z20fd has, but it takes a better picture and costs less too. If I was in the market for a cheap, pocket camera it offers better value for money than this camera does.

If you are looking for a cheap digital camera with a bit of style and you are not overly worried about picture quality then the Fuji Finepix Z20fd could fit the bill. If you are looking for a bit of extra picture quality then I would suggest looking elsewhere.

Front View

Back View

Top View

Sample Menu

Although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information on this site, please make sure you double check the feature set and specification at the point of purchase.

Fuji Finepix Z20fd