Fujifilm FinePix S2550HD – Low Price Camera With 18x Lens
Thumbs Up:
The Fujifilm FinePix S2550HD comes with manual and semi-manual shooting modes; has a comfy design and is comparatively inexpensive for a Megazoom and is powered by AA-size batteries.
Thumbs Down:
The Fujifilm FinePix S2550HD delivers sluggish performance and the picture quality of the camera drops significantly above ISO 200.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Manufacturer: Fujifilm
Part Number: S2550HD
Price: $187.99 – $249.95
Product Type: Digital Camera
Weight: 0.7 lbs
Dimensions (W x D x H) in inches: 4.3 x 3.2 x 2.9 inches
Optical Sensor Type: CCD
White balance: Automatic & Manual
Exposure Modes: Aperture priority, Program, Manual and Shutter priority
Software: Drivers & Utilities
Camera Flash: Built-in
Cables Included: 1 x USB cable
Connector Type: 1 x HDMI output and 1 x USB
Additional Features: DPOF support & PictBridge support
Shooting Programs: Scene recognition auto , Auto mode , Normal movie mode , Panorama , Landscape , Portrait , Night mode , Sport , Fireworks , Tripod , Snow , Daylight , Beach , Natural light , Flower , Party , Smile shot and Text
White Balance Presets: Shade, Fine, Cool white fluorescent, Automatic, Incandescent, Warm white fluorescent and Custom
Still Image Format: JPEG and EXIF 2.2
Digital Video Format: AVI and MJPEG
Flash Modes: Auto mode having red-eye reduction , Auto mode , Red-eye on , Flash OFF mode , Forced OFF mode , Red-eye off , Slow synchro , Forced ON having red-eye reduction and Slow sync with red-eye reduction mode
Included Accessories: USB-A/V cable, 4 x AA-size alkaline batteries, Lens cap and Carrying strap
Supported Battery: 4 x AA size Alkaline battery
Battery Type: Alkaline battery
Razzle Dazzle:
The Fujifilm FinePix S2550HD is far from a pocket-friendly camera, but still is a compact camera despite its main feature the wide-angle 28-504mm-equivalent lens. The camera has a huge right-hand drip that gives you something to actually hold on to. The huge right hand drip of the camera also houses the four SDHC card slot and AA-size batteries. In addition to housing the four AA size batteries it also dedicated buttons for burst shooting and face detection in addition to the shutter release, on/off slider, which you have to hold for a really long time to get the camera turned on or off and zoom ring. Positioned on the top of the camera is a huge Mode dial, which is clearly marked with the main 10 shooting options for the camera.
Positioned on the rear end of the camera is a decently bright 3 inch LCD and positioned above it is an electronic viewfinder. You can view all the settings on the LCD and electronic viewfinder of the camera.
Inside Dope:
The Fujifilm FinePix S2550HD is yet another entrant in the already flooding segment of megazoom cameras, which are available at a wide range of price points and from small to large sizes all. The 18x zoom Fujifilm FinePix S2550HD comes under the “budget” category and could be bought at less than $250; you can even get the camera for less than $200, as well. That price for a camera that has a lens with its reach is really great. The shooting features of the camera are superb for its class including manual and semi-manual controls. As well as plenty of several burst shooting options. The camera also has an electronic viewfinder, which many of the camera manufacturers have started dropping from their lower-end megazooms.
Conversely, though the FinePix S2550HD looks like a shrunken digital SLR, but the shooting performance for the camera is really slow. So it will be hard here to capture the photo of moving subjects like a child or vehicle or even your pet. One another thing worth noticing here is that if what you want is indoor/low-light photo quality, then you definitely will be disappointed here. The FinePix S2550HD is well suited for the outdoor photography in decent bright lighting.
But if you are ok with all those upsets then the FinePix S2550HD, then you probably should like the camera.
Positioned on the left hand side of textured thumb rest of the camera, there is a button that let you switch between the EVF and LCD. Positioned under that are the Playback, Menu/OK, F-mode, Display buttons, a directional pad for changing screen brightness and navigation, Exposure Compensation, macro settings, an Instant Zoom feature which is suppose to help you in framing the intermittently moving subjects at the same time as using the very same zoom lens and flash. Press the F-mode of the camera and you will get the contextual shooting menu for the camera and pressing the OK/Menu brings yet another set of setup and shooting menus for the camera. Using the F-mode is pretty straightforward once you’ve figured out when to press the F-mode rather than Menu.
The FinePix S2550HD runs on AA-size batteries, though the camera is packaged with the alkaline batteries, but it is compatible with rechargeable NiMH and lithium ion batteries as well. So if you want some extra shooting time, you can easily use these batteries, both of which will give you slightly more shooting time than the alkaline batteries. The battery and the memory card slot of the camera can be accessed behind a locking camera on the base of the camera. The aforementioned locking door requires some additional power to close, which might be frustrating at times. Positioned on the right hand side of the camera is a small door that houses the Micro-USB/AV and Mini-HDMI ports, is used to connect the camera to a monitors, HDTV’s or computers.
In terms of performance, the in general photo quality shot by the S2550HD is pretty decent. The image quality clearly worsens going up the ISO 200, and for ISO 800 the images becomes almost unusable. The video quality is also OK for the camera and like the still photos the low-light video of the camera are noisy. But that’s what you expect from a compact camera, so there actually is nothing to be surprised about. On a whole we can say that the FinePix S2550HD isn’t bad at all.
Nitty Gritty:
The Fujifilm FinePix S2550HD is a low-cost camera with an 18x wide-angle lens and as we said earlier the Fujifilm FinePix S2550HD isn’t that entire bad camera, as its delivers almost OK shooting performance and photos.
