FUJIFILM FinePix S2000HD is Practically Picture Perfect!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Not TOO expensive, intuitive, durable, nice quality pictures and video.

Cons: Easy to fat-finger wrong buttons, no threading for lens filter.

The Bottom Line: 
I definitely recommend to anyone looking to hop into digital with a camera that can do more than just a beginner's without being too complicated!

Author's Review
I’ve long dragged my feet on the digital camera front.  Sure, our cell phones have digital cameras and video, with the expected crap quality images except in very specific circumstances and settings.  But I’ve been a bit of a luddite, not because I don’t believe in them, but because I refused to buy something cheap that was going to pump out low quality pictures, and we don’t have the money to fork over for something top-of-the-line.  Better to do without than to get something substandard and be unhappy with the results, right?

Out of blue last spring, a FINGERHUT catalogue came in the mail. No, I’m not prone to Fingerhutting, but I do tend to flip through them before I toss them into the recyclables bin.  There I was, browsing, browsing, when there IT was.  A camera.  A nice-looking camera.  A camera that was, to be blunt, nicer than anything I expected to find in that catalogue.  And surprise, surprise, a credit offer that would cover the camera and an additional memory card.

I put it aside, determined to fight the urge.  I kept my mouth shut as my husband picked up the catalogue and landed on the very same page, ogling the very same camera.  He looked at me.  I looked at him. 

Hello, FujiFilm FinePix S2000HD!

First thing?  Hop online and see how much this baby goes for in the REAL world.  Turns out Fingerhut only wanted 15 bucks more for it than Target or Walmart.  Okay, 15 bucks isn’t outrageous, I can go along with that.  I hopped on the computer and placed the order.

Joy!

Now the FinePix S2000HD isn’t the very, very best digital camera you can get.  If you’re a professional photographer, you’re probably going to go up that ladder a few rungs before you find the camera that’s right for you.  But me?  I was making do with a 2.0 megapixel, 3x zoom cell phone camera, so when faced with my new camera’s 10 megapixel, 15x optical zoom, I was absolutely FLOORED!

The FinePix S2000HD isn’t as big as it looks in the pictures.  It’s not miniscule, more like a 35mm junior in appearance.  It has the battery housing/handle gig on the side for easier handling, and comes with a neck strap, which reinforces the “cute little 35mm” impression.

The first thing we discovered?  The built-in 55 MB memory is puny!  Utterly insufficient!  For anything!  We filled that up before we even read the manual!   The second thing we discovered?  Hooking the camera to the computer via the included USB cable and using the FujiFilm Finepix software was a crap shoot.  Sometimes the images come off the camera with no problems, sometimes some of the shots are completely corrupted.  And sometimes the software locks up the desktop and crashes the computer.  We’re running Vista Home Premium, which, along with the other Vista versions, Apple Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition,  Microsoft Windows XP Professional, and Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional are compatible with the included software.

How to get around this problem?  Well, there may be a fix, but we never found one that involved patches or anything of the like.  What we did find is that popping the SD card we purchased into the camera for shooting, then into the computer for uploading bypasses the faulty software entirely.  If we want to edit the shots, I just open them directly into Adobe Photoshop Elements from the SD card and do my thing over there.  It’s really quite hassle free and easy to do—easier, even, than hooking the camera to the computer via a USB cable.

We started with a 2 gig SD card, and found it . .  . lacking.  So we grabbed a 16 gig, and we’re really quite happy now.  That holds a whole trip to Wendover, including a day at the Air Show (with multiple videos), futzing in the in-room Jacuzzi (no, the camera was not IN the Jacuzzi), a couple of drives out into the desert and Salt Flats, and general “11 year old in the back seat with a camera” shots.  I highly recommend getting a higher capacity SD card for this camera for convenience and confidence.

From a practical, point-and-shoot angle, this little camera rocks.  It can be set to fully automatic with image stabilization (to help eliminate shake) and used like any “instamatic” camera (with zoom!).  While it will tell you via the LCD screen when using the pop-up flash is advisable, it doesn’t MAKE you use that flash.  So if you like taking dark pictures or are looking for a certain quality of light, the FinePix S2000HD isn’t going to shut you down or argue with you.  Not like my old Nikon 8008 did.  Endlessly.  The flash does have an amazing number of settings and combinations which are, to be honest, beyond me.  If it’s too dark, I flip up the flash and take the picture.  If I don’t like the quality of light or backlighting, I flip up the flash and use it as a fill.  Using the flash in broad daylight will change the quality of color in the shot, and that’s exactly what I want it to do.  It routinely does what I want it to do, and I don’t understand quite why.

The FinePix S2000HD boasts a “face detection” program that claims to recognize and specially focus upon multiple faces in a shot (and automatically fix red eye).  While this often works, it also sometimes decides that clouds, trees, or particularly interesting rocks are faces.  And sometimes it completely misses the real faces.  It once failed to recognize my son's face as such, but picked up the lawnmower behind him as a face.  Thank goodness—the last thing we need is a lawn mower with red eye!

The LCD screen, while large enough (2.7 inch) to get a good look at what you’re doing and you’ve done, picks up a vicious glare in many different lighting situations, and shading it with a hand or hat doesn’t always do the trick.  I find this to be worse when viewing already shot pictures—probably an angle thing.  Because the body is rather small, that LCD screen often winds up covered with accidental fingerprints.

In addition to the basic “point and shoot” settings, this camera allows for a fair degree of manual control over settings, shooting speed, etc.  It was my 11 year old son who figured out the wonder of the macro and super-macro settings, which have led him to wonderful super-close up pictures of bugs, flowers, plants, and even fabric textures and dirt.  Yep, dirt.  Looks amazing at super-macro.  In addition to editing through computer programs, the FinePix S2000HD has onboard editing, cropping, filtering, rotating, voice tagging (recording a small note with the image), and effects which allows for some on-the-spot creativity.

The FinePix S2000HD has a fine video function, though, again, the built-in memory is utterly insufficient for this purpose.  According to FujiFilm, the standard memory can accommodate only 49 seconds of HD video recording (longer for lower quality video).  Add a 16 gig SD card and suddenly the camera can handle 230 minutes (that's 230 TOTAL--each individual movie is limited to 4 gig, and HD movies are limited to 15 minutes per movie).  Video quality is good—you’re not going to be shooting any Hollywood blockbusters on this camera, but you’re also not going to be pointing and asking if the grayish blob on the left is Uncle Roy.  Sound quality is average—no awards here, but it’s all intelligible without having to struggle.  While special care has to be taken to prevent the shaking of the image from becoming “pukecam,” it is quite possible to take a good quality video without too much effort if you remember not to jerk your hand all over the place. 

Speaking of HD recording, the wonder of this camera’s HD capabilities came to life the first time we hooked it up to our new Samsung 50 inch Plasma TV.  WOW!  We’d hooked the camera up to the old CRT before, but this was something amazing.  It’s what every kid wishes would happen when viewing pictures and videos.  I remember the old slide shows with vacation shots we all used to sit through.  This is like that, only AMAZING!

While still near the subject of videos, shooting video with this camera eats batteries like mad.  Do yourself a favor—get the recharge-ables and save yourself a bunch of money.  We bought two sets so one is recharging while the other is in use.

Are there shortcomings to the FinePix S2000HD?  You bet:

·        The collection of buttons for settings, macros, video, viewing/scrolling, etc. on the back of the camera is too jammed together, too small, and too easy to accidentally press when handling the camera.  You can imagine the tears when Hubby accidentally deleted the hundreds of photos and videos from our son’s first-time demolition derby.  Ouch.

·        This camera has no real use when it comes to “open shutter” night-time shooting.  That’s what the old F4 is for.

·        There’s not nearly the depth of field leeway you find with a “real” camera.  Again, out comes the F4.

·        There is no threading to allow for lens filters.  I’m an habitual UV filter user, more for keeping my lens safe than anything else.

·        The standard lens (Fujinon 15x Optical zoom lens, F3.5 (Wide) - F5.4 (Telephoto)) isn’t replaceable, i.e., you can’t mount a new lens on this camera. 

Even with those shortcomings, I’m quite enamored of this camera.  Our vacations usually entail dozens upon dozens of rolls of film requiring developing.  It’s not unheard of for us to spend 6 months getting a few developed each payday.  With the money we were spending on film and developing each year, we could buy 3 of this camera.  With our Adobe Photoshop and our handy-dandy printer, we can print out anything we want to have on paper or in a frame, and keep the rest on the computer and backed up to disk.  It’s not as romantic as the old-fashioned way, but it’s a heck of a lot more convenient and easy to keep organized.  And I really, REALLY like being able to look at the pictures I’ve taken while I’m still AT the Washington Monument or County Fair so that, if they didn’t turn out, I can take them again!  Nothing much sadder than getting home from a 3 week vacation to find that half your pictures didn’t turn out.

Now, I know I keep referring to this as “my” camera, but the sad truth is that my 11 year old took this puppy over from day one.  He has spent hundreds and hundreds of hours just taking pictures.  Time lapse pictures, macro pictures, videos of birds in flight and at the feeders, stop-motion series with Lego figs he’s created, and many self portraits using our old tripod (yep, this camera mounts) and the self-timer function.  He’s discovered high-speed shooting (up to 13.5 frames per second at lowest quality), shooting in sets (aka "zoom bracketing," where a single shot produces three images with three different zoom settings), and spends his afternoons fiddling with settings and options to see what combinations create what outcomes.  It’s actually wonderful to watch him learn, explore, and improve. 

And that’s probably one of the biggest selling points for me—this camera isn’t just versatile or intuitive, it’s also forgiving.  My son is 11 years old, and he’s been experimenting with this camera, indoors and out, unsupervised, for months now, and the camera’s fine.  It forgives when incompatible options are selected.  The shot may turn out for dirt, but the camera’s just fine.  If you’re in the market for a not-TOO-expensive (around $250.00, sometimes less) digital camera that works very hard to take pretty, pleasing photos, has a gaggle of settings and options, and yet isn’t too difficult for an 11 year old to figure out, this is your camera.  I’m certainly happy with it!