The idea behind Fuji's S200EXR is to occupy the territory abandoned by the Panasonic FZ50: that of an expert-level bridge camera. 

With its manual zoom and a whole series of shortcuts, it's very clearly aimed at a demanding public who want to enjoy a 14x zoom without having to use several lenses or pay extra for a 14-250 mm superzoom: in short, people who don't want or need an SLR.

Handling

Just like the S100fs, from which it has inherited its lens and most of its bodywork, the F200EXR is big, heavy and well-built.  A large handle makes sure you'll always have a steady grip, even if you have big hands.  There are a few small details we'd take issue with, like the rubber covers over some of the outputs or the screws that are visible all over the case, but in general, the quality is excellent.

That makes it even more sad to see that the rotating screen has disappeared.  There hasn't even a move to a better resolution to make up for the lost mobility: it's stuck at 230 000 pixels, with a very thick border round the outside; the same is true for the viewfinder, an element that a number of recent cameras like the Lumix G1 and GH1 have done without.


Dotted around the camera body are several buttons giving direct access to various features like sensitivity, exposure correction, and exposure mode, with this last still controlled by a frustrating mode dial.  The manual zoom dial is big and comfortable, and works effectively, just like the smaller focus dial.  Overall, using the S200EXR is a lot like using an SLR.

We did notice that the menus weren't particularly well organised, and not particularly clear, with, for instance, RAW mode hidden in the custom settings or the fact that the flash doesn't work in silent mode.

Responsiveness

In this part of tests, the S200EXR had mixed results.  The good news is that it responds quickly at every focal length (around half a second); the input lag on the screen is practically nil and the time you have to wait between two photos is limited … for JPEGs, anyway.  The bad news includes the two seconds you need to wait for the camera to start up, the length of time it takes to save photos as RAW files, and even the short pause that occurs every time you open an option in a menu.


While we're talking about how fast it is, it's also worth pointing out that even switching the camera off can take a certain amount of time.  It's not that much of a problem--except if you suddenly change your mind and decide to switch it back on again.  The S200EXR crashes if you flip the switch back to 'on' before it's finished powering down.  That means you have to turn it back 'off' and wait before turning it on again, which can be very frustrating when you're on the ago.  Equally, a quick press on the shutter release doesn't wake it from standby, either: once again, you'll need to turn it off, wait, and switch it back on again.

Image Quality

There's not much that we don't know already here: the S200EXR has inherited its lens from the S100fs and its sensor from the F200EXR.  Some shots are now tighter because the new sensor is smaller: the once much-liked 28 mm wide-angle is now a simple 30.5 mm, which is a shame.

Like with the S100fs, we found a marked tendency to introduce purple fringing in heavily contrasted areas as well as traces of chromatic aberration, especially with wide-angle shots.


Electronic noise, on the other hand, is handled very differently to how it is on the F200EXR.  Paradoxically, the F200EXR, a mass-market compact, was very conservative which preserved a lot of detail but also plenty of noise. To keep things in context, Super CCD EXR sensors are still along way ahead of traditional CCDs and are only just rivalled by the new Exmor R sensors.  On the S200EXR, a bridge with experts in mind, there's a lot more processing, leaving a more blurry result that is more typical of a 'mass-market' camera and that can reasonably be printed up to 800 or 1600 ISO, but with details missing even at 400 ISO.  We would have much preferred it if things were the other way round …

Elsewhere, we also noticed that the white balancing wasn't quite perfect, not just in our studio, which has certainly tripped up plenty of other cameras, but more frustratingly in the real world.  Photos we took in shadows were always tinged with blue, which, although technically corresponds to the light conditions, isn't exactly what we'd like to see.

It seems that Fuji is too confident about its camera's ability to handle electronic noise: given the chance, the S200EXR rapidly climbs to 800 or even 1600 ISO in automatic mode, making a mockery of the stabilisation system (with the shutter speed still fairly long) and producing relatively noisy photos, even of static subjects.

Video

Fuji is one of the fees stubborn diehards who refuse to move over to HD, so the S200EXR only films in VGA.  The quality is acceptable, despite the noise visible in the shadows, but the mic is particularly dreadful.  Only the availability of the zoom and continuous autofocus improve the picture.