Fujifilm Finepix Z3

Well, we all know the company well enough – Fujifilm. It’s been regarded with photography for quite a while now. So naturally I was expecting something quite out-of the ordinary when it came to the Finepix Z3 - picture-wise that is. But to be brutally honest the Z3 didn’t live up to my expectations.

Design
I do like the styling of the Z3, its small compact and light, weighing in at 170g. The Z3 is stylish and yet small enough to fit neatly into your pocket without any sign of a bulge. Like the others in the series, it uses a sliding panel in front to switch the camera on and reveal the lens.

Fuji claims that its 2.5-inch LCD display also has a reinforced surface that’s apparently scratch resistant. So go ahead, take a look, run a nail over the surface (Just kidding! Please don’t. You don’t want to be wrong). With its 230K pixels, the display is clear and crisp for previews. Its dimensions are just 89 x 56 x 20 mm. I found it quite comfortable to hold and store.

The camera does have a few odd things, which am not sure what they stood for. Like for instance there seem to be 3 LED indicators on the rear panel. The manual only mentions the first one as being the indicator for the battery charge. What the other 2 are for, is anyone’s guess. There’s also, what appears to be, an Infrared sensor on the side just above the strap mount. But as per the manual, it does nothing. Hmm… strange!

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Features
Feature-wise the Z3 has nothing new to offer, except a few extra shooting modes to choose from. It’s a 5.1 megapixel camera with only 3x Optical zoom and 5.7x digital zoom.

Point and shoot photographers have a lot to explore here. Presets like Landscape, Macro, Night mode, and Fireworks are found in plenty of cameras nowadays. But aside from these there are a few others like portrait, snow, museum mode that suppresses the flash, and sports mode for capturing images in action. There’s also a setting for taking pictures of text.

The Sports mode function, I found, came in quite handy when I needed pictures of moving objects like cars or people jumping around.

The Z3 offers little to people who are looking for more manual control. Even after setting the camera to the manual shooting mode, all you get control over is exposure compensation, white balance (presets only) and ISO sensitivity settings. However, you have no control over the shutter speed or aperture size, or even the flash intensity.

The Z3 also offers a few basic post-processing functions. For example you can rotate the image a full 180 degrees or crop it to your requirement. There’s also an option for creating a Voice Memo for the picture. What you can also do of course, is protect certain images, in case you need to clear space in the memory, by selecting the ‘Erase All’ option. With regards to the erasing of pictures I have to say, it’s a real pain. It takes almost three full seconds to erase a single image.

The functions of the Z3 are nothing grand and the company has not offered anything that other cameras in its Z3’s range offer.

Performance
I have to say the performance was really unimpressive. At first the pictures were clear and vibrant when previewed on the camera, but when transferred to the PC there was plenty to prove that my first impression was wrong.

The Z3 picks up the colors quite well but in actual size there’s so much of a watercolor effect; it’s quite appalling. Though in smaller sizes it wouldn’t really make a difference, but when viewing the image in its native resolution, the dithering is just way too high. It may not affect the resized pictures that you send via emails, but it will definitely affect the quality of your full-page prints.

Outdoor pictures are not bad actually. There’s virtually no pin-cushioning around the edges, so even though the sharpness level is low, it remains constant throughout the image.

Using macro settings close ups of colorful objects revealed that the camera is indeed worthy of capturing colors like the reds, pinks, greens and oranges quite accurately. The colors come off as vibrant and bright without burning out.

I’m not entirely satisfied with the night mode however. Pictures were rather blurry and unclear.

It takes around a mere second or so for the camera to start up and for you to start clicking away. The time between shot is a bit long almost 2 seconds. That’s not too much of a problem if you use the burst or if you’re continuous mode.

Thanks to its large display, focusing on objects is easy. Pictures in low lighting were quite bright with the help of the flash.
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Connectivity
What I really don’t like is the fact that if I’m traveling, not only do I need to carry the charger but the darn camera doesn’t charge directly. It needs to be connected to the bundled cradle and charger, USB and AV cables can be connected to that as well. So I cant simply plug and play, I need to cart the cradle with me as well. Not that it’s heavy or anything but its just one more thing to lug around.

The Z3 also supports Pict Bridge so it can be connected to a compatible printer via USB and start printing.

Conclusion
There are plenty of cameras to choose from that fall in a lower price range with features that may not match the Z3 exactly but are as good as. Bottom Line – it’s a Point and Shoot camera. At Rs. 13,500 it ain’t worth it.
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Specs