The J150W boasts a 10 Megapixel sensor, a 5x optical zoom and a 28mm wide angle lens, all this for an entry level price. So how does it compete with the other cameras on the shelves?

Handling

The brushed aluminium metal shell of the J150W is both stylish and elegant. The rear panel is composed mainly of a large 3.0" LCD display with 230,000 dots of resolution. This allows little space for anything else. Even the on/off and the shutter buttons are tiny. In terms of navigation, it is all very easy to grasp. A control dial to switch modes, a menu to change the sensitivity, a joypad for options such as flash, macro, mode... and to move around within menus...



Reactivity is pretty good. Focus in bright light is quick: 0,64 seconds. Burst mode at 2,7 frames per second is fine too. Sadly there will be little raving about the rest. Shutter lag requires 1,60 seconds and the recording time between two pictures takes 3,55 seconds. `

Image Quality

The 10-megapixel sensor will provide sharp pictures with all the right colour accents. No need here to use additional software to make colours look any more striking. A4 prints are satisfying. The lense is good, but as you can see below, there is a significant loss of detail on the left hand side.



There is also some underexposure, but you can still make out the details in the more washed out zones. At 100%, there is some coloured fringing, but nothing too bad and this becomes almost invisible on an A4 print. Outdoors, colours are vivid. Indoors white balance will produce reddish colours.

It all gets a bit trickier when shooting on the go as there is no image stabilization. A decent image of our Barbie took 1/14 seconds. In low light conditions, sensitivity is higher (also to reduce the effect of shake) and the noise is more apparent too.

In terms of noise, there is little of it up to 100 ISO. At 400 ISO sensitivity, some starts showing and from 800 ISO there is quite a lot of it. However the blurry effect is still better than with other cameras we tested (such as the Panasonic LZ10). On the whole the image quality is a bit above that of the competition.




The Fuji FinePix J150w records videos though the zoom function is disabled during movie recording. Playback is good.