Fujifilm FinePix XP30

Hot on the heels of Olympus, Fujifilm has decided to make a waterproof, shockproof camera with a decent set of tech specs (wide-angle lens, stabilisation etc.) for under £150. While the FinePix XP10 was no match for the µ Tough-3000, on paper, Fuji's XP30 looks like a more serious rival for the new Olympus TG-310. It even has a built-in GPS, a feature not often seen in low-cost cameras.

Handling

This camera does bear some resemblance to the XP10 it's designed to replace thanks to its similarly chunky, bar-of-soap kind of look. That said, the XP30's design and, in particular, its controls have actually changed a fair bit. For example, the zoom control buttons on the back of the former model have been replaced by a little lever by the shutter-release button, which is actually quite practical to use. The previously rubber-covered controls have given way to real buttons, which means the video button is now marked with the universal red dot rather than a vague camera symbol.


It's no surprise to see TN screen technology in this low-cost camera. This makes for tight viewing angles, light greys that are overexposed to white and approximative colour fidelity—even with the screen directly in front of you. The interface is all quite standard stuff; it's neither incredibly clear nor incredibly complicated. The choice of settings and options is limited, but that's only to be expected from a camera in this price range.

The twin-lock USB port, memory card and battery compartment cover is quite well designed, with two locks to hold the door firmly in place. The lock lever is small enough so as not to get accidentally caught or knocked, but big enough to be easily moved with a fairly short nail (which should be good news for outdoor types or sporty users). You just need to make sure your press it in all the way so that the yellow 'locked' marking disappears with a reassuring click. Note that there's still no sign of a battery guide to help make sure you load the battery the right way round. You'll therefore need to look at the sticker inside the compartment to see which way round the battery goes in.

Responsiveness

First of all, the good news: the autofocus is within average, usually managing to focus in less than a second, even if it does slow down a fair bit in low light.

Otherwise, the XP30 is quite disappointing. You have to wait two seconds for it to save a photo, which is just about acceptable, but the 'burst' mode of three pictures in two and a half seconds is just a joke. Don't even get us started on the start-up time of over three seconds either!

Picture Quality

The XP30 has a sensor that's been widely used already in the compact camera market. However, no manufacturer has managed to make this 14-Megapixel CCD excel. Fuji doesn't work any miracles either, and 400 ISO is the highest ISO setting you can feasibly use without having to worry too much about quality (even then, picky users will still notice increasing speckles of coloured noise, particularly in green shades). At 800 ISO quality degrades significantly. It's therefore likely that Fujifilm has saved money on the image processing system to keep down costs in this camera.

If you really must, you can push on all the way up to 3200 ISO, but even a postage stamp sized print will look fuzzy at this setting.


The new 28-140 mm lens is incredibly slow, with an aperture of just f/3.9 at the maximum wide-angle setting. At 28 mm, shots are just about sharp in the middle of the frame but become much fuzzier towards the edges. At 140 mm, the image is hazy across the whole frame and coloured fringes are only too visible on 8" x 10" prints (20 x 27 cm).

Seeing these results, we decided to test a second XP30 to see if this was just a problem with our particular test model. However, the second model not only confirmed our initial results but actually took photos that were even less sharp in the middle than the first ones!


In spite of all that, the XP30 does have a decent stabilisation system. Our Barbie shots were consistently sharp—or as sharp as the lens will let them to be—from 1/6 of a second, which does slightly make up for the poor ISO performance.

Video

The XP30 films 720p HD video in the rather outdated Mjpeg format (we had actually stopped mentioning the H.264 format as it's become pretty much standard, even in entry-level devices). The mono sound is made worse by a poor-quality microphone, which makes everything sound crushed, metallic and confused. You can use the optical zoom while filming but the XP30 has quite a loud lens motor, which you can hear in the background of videos.

Picture quality is nothing to write hope about either. The sharpness could be better, there's a visible fuzz of speckling noise and the excessive contrast drowns out finer detail in dark areas of the shot.