Fujifilm FinePix S2950

The Fujifilm FinePix S2950 is the most affordable of Fuji's S-series cameras. This entry-level bridge is actually identical to the S2800HD, with exactly the same specs and functions, including 720p video, a 14-Megapixel sensor, an 18x 28-504 mm zoom lens, a 3-inch LCD with a resolution of just 230,000 dots and exactly the same camera body!

Handling

As soon as you pick up the S2950, the first thing you notice is its nice, deep grip handle. This helps you hold onto the S2950 pretty well, even if a proper thumb-rest on the back of the camera would have made a nice addition. The materials used don't really do the camera body any favours though, as the imitation-leather-effect rubber grips and the flecked, all-plastic casing aren't exactly flattering.


Even if this is an entry-level camera, the screen could still have been better. Light greys are washed out to white, colours aren't reproduced accurately, the resolution is a pretty low 230,000 dots and viewing angles are tight (what do you expect from a TN panel?).

Bridge viewfinders aren't usually up to much and the S2950 is no exception—it lacks brightness, has a blue tinge, looks slightly blurred around the edges and is prone to strong rainbow effects.

One good thing is that the menus are very simple and user-friendly, and they're easy enough for beginners to get their heads around quickly as there aren't many advanced options. However, the interface can be pretty slow to respond—even basic operations like zooming in on an image in playback mode can take almost two seconds!

Responsiveness

The responsiveness issues don't stop there either! All we can say is that you'd better not be in a hurry to take a picture with this camera, especially at wide-angle settings. Worse still, although the autofocus system works relatively slowly, it still doesn't manage to be accurate—over half of the sample shots we snapped to test the camera's speed turned out to be blurred!


The S2950 isn't particularly quick to start up either. Even though bridges are often a bit slow to get going, the 3.3 seconds it takes the S2950 to switch on is still too long by current standards. The continuous shooting mode is also limited to three photos in 1.3 seconds.

Picture Quality

The S2950 has a 14-Megapixel CCD, which is usually a sign of high noise levels.


Fuji counteracts this noise using smoothing. This is already very much visible at 200 ISO—so much so, in fact, that you'll be able to spot it on a 4" x 6" print (10 x 15 cm). At 200 ISO the contour lines on the map in our test shots were pretty much wiped out (see above).

At 400 ISO a different effect kicks in, as in the interest of controlling noise and chromatic aberration, the camera desaturates colours, making the image look washed out and faded.


Manufacturers are always quick to point out that good-quality zoom lenses don't come cheap. So with an 18x zoom selling for around £150, we weren't expecting miracles from the S2950 ... and yet it still managed to disappoint us a little. At wide-angle settings the chromatic aberration comes out crystal clear (!), even on a 4" x 6" print, while the image is blurred around the edges. At 200 mm things get considerably better though, with chromatic aberration that's much better controlled and a sharper image around the edges of the frame. At the maximum zoom setting the image finally becomes reasonably sharp across the whole frame and coloured fringes are less of a problem.

Video

The S2950 films acceptable-quality 720p HD video. The picture is reasonably sharp and detailed, and speckling noise is fairly well controlled. Note, however, that the contrast is a little excessive, swamping darker areas and overexposing light, bright zones.

Unfortunately, the autofocus isn't up to much, as it seems to be constantly searching to find its focusing point. The digital zoom is problematic too, as it jumps and judders rather than zooming smoothly and blows up pixels to monstrous proportions.


The S2950 records mono sound with a permanent hissing in the background. The sound is generally quite confused, and individual noises can be hard to distinguish—apart from any noises coming from the camera, that is. The digital zoom kicking in can be particularly noisy and the autofocus makes a kind of clicking noise.