Digital Trends

Fujifilm Finepix s8100fd

March 14th, 2008 | by David Elrich

The rear has a 2.5-inch LCD screen (rated 230K pixels) that holds up fairly well even in strong sunlight. In case it does wipe out or you’re in extreme telephoto, there’s a .24-inch electronic viewfinder (EVF) with diopter control. The LCD screen isn’t nearly as good as some other cameras and tends to enter “dot city” when shooting in low light. A button to the right of the EVF lets you quickly switch between one and the other. To the right of the screen is the classic four-way controller with center Menu/OK button. Tap the points of the controller and you can adjust the flash, delete shots and move into macro. The continuous mode is rather interesting as it gives you a wide range of burst modes along with exposure bracketing. With Top3 you only get three 10MP images and then the camera stops to store the files (it takes about 6 seconds). Then there’s a straight continuous mode that lets you take shots (at about 1 frame per second) for the amount of space on the card. The last two options are fun: Top33 (5MP) and Top33 Ultra High Speed at 3-megapixels. Here the camera zips along taking that many 5- or 3MP photos (without the flash, of course). You’ll never miss your kids running downfield kicking the winning goal—or almost any other fast movement. Realize you’re dropping resolution tremendously so forget about large prints. Still it’s fun to play with.

Other buttons near the controller let you access playback mode, “F” lets you adjust ISO from 64-1600 at full resolution and 3200/6400 at 5MP. You can also change resolution and FinePix Color (standard, chrome and B&W). Another button is exposure compensation and it displays the histogram with another click. The Display/Back key lets you pick the amount of icons that’ll clutter the screen (grid lines are available).

On the right side is the card slot and it nicely takes xD, SD and SDHC memory. On the left is the speaker and compartment for USB and optional DC-in connections. On the bottom of this Made in Indonesia digicam is the plastic tripod mount and battery compartment door. BTW Olympus Ultra Zooms are also made in Indonesia. As mentioned it uses four AAs but you’d do well to use rechargeable NiMH batteries since they’ll last 500 shots compared to 300 if you use alkalines.

The Fujifilm FinePix S8100fd comes with a basic kit including strap, USB and A/V cables and my favorite—a lens cap attached by a piece of string—how sophisticated! That said no mega zoom has a built-in lens cover; I just like pointing out how foolish they all look with their caps flapping in the breeze… The kit also includes a CD-ROM with FinePix View ver. 5.4 for Windows and ver. 3.5 for Mac for handling basic downloading and editing chores as well as a 164-page owner’s manual. The camera has 58MB of internal memory so you can take some shots right away but do yourself a favor and pop in a 2-gig SDHC card.

With the camera prepped, it was time to start taking photographs…

Image Courtesy of Fujifilm