Introduction

Product Tour

Overview

The Z30 has a unique design

The Fujifilm Z30 packs a 10-megapixel resolution and a 3x optical zoom into a very tiny body. The camera is available in pink, purple, orange, black, and white and should be available soon for around $180. On the floor at PMA we spent most of our time with the orange model, as shown throughout this review. The Z30 isn't the most stylish device and its design makes it look more like a toy than an exciting, fashionable piece of technology.

Front

The front of the Fujifilm Z30 utilizes a sliding panel to open and conceal the lens. The panel also acts as an on/off switch for the camera when it is opened and closed. The lens doesn't extend out from the camera when you turn it on, but instead remains embedded within the body of the Z30. The sliding panel design isn't our favorite, as it can accidentally open when the camera is in your pocket, and the mechanism on our pre-production sample didn't feel all that sturdy. The flash is also located on the top of the sliding panel, and a tiny microphone sits in the lower right corner.

The sliding panel on the front opens to reveal the lens.

Back

The back of the camera hosts a 2.7-inch LCD screen with a 230,000-pixel resolution. Two columns of buttons are located to the right of the screen: zoom buttons at the top, delete and playback below them, macro focus and flash control next, followed by self-timer and menu/OK, and in the bottom corner are display/back and movie mode. Making things a little confusing, certain buttons also double as 4-way directional controls (represented with arrows above their icons).

The entire back is covered by buttons and the LCD.

Sides

The sides are lonely spaces on the Fujifilm Z30. Only the right side has any features—a small, metal ring for attaching a wrist strap. You do get an idea of the camera's shape from the shots below, however.

_The left and right sides are colorful, but unremarkable. _ Top

The only features on the top of the Z30 are the shutter button and a cluster of round dots that represent the camera's speaker.

Fujifilm keeps the top very simple.

Bottom

The bottom of the Z30 is also relatively simple. A hinged door on the left slides open to reveal the battery compartment, memory card slot, and USB port. Putting the USB port inside the battery compartment is poor design because it means you have to open the sliding door and expose the entire compartment every time you want to connect the camera to a computer. The port also doubles as an A/V-output, requiring an accessory cable.

The battery and memory card load from the bottom.

Hardware

Viewfinder

There's no viewfinder on the compact Fujifilm Z30.

LCD

The 2.7-inch LCD has a 230,000-pixel resolution and offers approximately 97% coverage according to Fujifilm. While the screen definitely looks nice, its placement is very problematic. There isn't any room on the back of the camera to rest your thumb as the entire back side is covered in either buttons or the LCD. This means you'll constantly find yourself resting a thumb on the screen itself, which will result in plenty of fingerprints and smudges mucking up the screen.

The LCD screen collects plenty of fingerprints.

Flash

For a little camera, the Z30 has lots of flash settings. In normal focus mode Fujifilm lists the effective flash range at roughly 2.3 - 10.1 feet (70cm - 3.1m) with the lens at its widest angle and 2.3 - 8.8 feet (70cm - 2.7m) with the lens at maximum telephoto. In macro focus mode the range goes from 1 - 2.6 feet (30 - 80cm). The flash settings included on the camera are: Auto, Forced Flash, Suppressed Flash, Slow Synchro, Red-eye Reduction Auto, Red-eye Reduction & Forced Flash, and Red-eye Reduction & Slow Synchro.

The Z30 has lots of flash settings.

Lens

The lens on the Z30 does not extend out from the body of the camera, so all its movement happens inside the casing. Even without any protrusion, the lens is still capable of a 3x optical zoom and has a focal length 6.3 - 18.9mm (a 35mm equivalent of 35 - 105mm). The lens has an aperture range of f/3.7 - f/8.0 at wide angle and f/4.2 - f/9.0 in telephoto. There is no lens cover, relying instead on the front sliding panel for protection.

The Z30 has a tiny lens with a 3x optical zoom.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs

The USB port placement on the Z30 is one of our biggest problems with the camera. The port is located inside the battery compartment, which means you have to leave open the battery hatch every time you want to connect the camera to a computer. The port also doubles as an A/V-output, but you must purchase an additional cable from Fujifilm if you want this connectivity option. This is simply a bad situation for everyone.

The placement of the USB port is impractical and annoying.

Battery

The camera includes a rechargeable lithium-ion battery (model NP-45). The battery loads in the compartment on the bottom of the camera, just above the memory card and USB port.

The Z30 uses a rechargeable battery.

Memory

The Z30 is packed with 50MB of internal memory, but this is only good for roughly 10 pictures at the highest quality setting. You'll have to purchase an SD/SDHC card separately if you truly want to make use of the camera. The memory cards load in the bottom compartment, just beneath the battery. According to Fujifilm, an 8GB SDHC card is good for approximately 1,610 photos taken at the highest quality settings.

Design & Layout

Design & Appearance

With an MSRP of roughly $180, the Fujifilm Z30 is a rather cheap camera — and it shows. It doesn't have the sophisticated design that many manufacturers are pushing right now, though some young people may be attracted to the bright colors and odd camera lines. It's shape is quirky, and available colors include pink, purple, and orange, each of which are extremely bright and vibrant. There are also standard white and black models for the more button-down photographer.

Size & Handling

The Z30 isn't uncomfortable to hold, but it has some handling issues. The main problem is the lack of any free space on the back of the camera. The entire back side is packed full of buttons and the LCD screen, which means you have nowhere safe to rest your thumb when you're taking a shot. The buttons themselves also have design flaws — they're too small, too close together, and the zoom buttons would be better off on the top of the camera.

As far as actual size is concerned, the Z30 is a splendidly compact device. Its dimensions are 3.6 x 2.3 x 1.0 inches (90.5 x 59 x 25.7 mm) and it weighs roughly 4.1 ounces (116.5g) not including the battery or memory card. Size-wise it's a good camera for carrying around in your pocket, although we aren't crazy about the protection provided by the sliding-panel lens cover design.

Even though it's small, the Z30 is annoying to hold.

Menu

There's a lot of features stuffed into the menus on the Z30, so if you enjoy navigating through many options on a quest for finding one particular setting, you'll probably like your experience with the Z30. The playback menu is particularly cluttered and the Blog feature (which has post-process picture effects) is very difficult to access and understand. This, combined with the sub-par buttons on the camera make the menu system overall disappointing. There is one plus, however, the camera offers a bit of text about each setting to give you a better understand of what you are adjusting.

The menus on the Z30 have too many options

The confusing Blog Trimming Menu

Ease of Use

We were hoping the Z30 would provide an easy user experience and it does — to a point. Regular auto mode provides a good amount of point-and-shoot simplicity, but when you attempt to access some of the other modes on the camera you may run into some trouble. The playback effects are plentiful, but are really too confusing to use on a regular basis. The camera's instruction manual runs a huge 106 pages, which is not what you'd expect for such a small, simple camera. There's lots of hidden features on the Z30 and you'll probably need to crack open the manual if you want to master them all.

In fairness, the scene mode settings were also fairly easy to use and make the camera a decent choice for beginners.

Modes

Auto Mode

In an effort to make things simpler, auto mode on the Fujifilm Z30 locks you out from adjusting certain controls (like white balance and exposure compensation). This is good, especially since the menu system on the Z30 doesn't have the best setup. Fujifilm also includes a number of scene modes and an auto scene recognition feature that will let the camera automatically select a scene mode for you to use. A face recognition feature is available on the camera as well.

Movie Mode

The Z30 includes a movie recording mode, although it can only capture standard definition video. Footage can be recorded at sizes of 640 x 480 or 320 x 240, both at 30 frames per second. Mono sound is captured along with the video and movies are recorded as AVI files using the Motion JPEG compression. Optical zoom cannot be used during video recording, but digital zoom is available.

Drive/Burst Mode

There are three continuous shooting modes on the camera. Long-period begins taking photos when the shutter button is pressed and doesn't stop until you release the button (or the memory is full). There's also an option called Final-3, which takes many photos but only saves the last three images. Top-3 is another continuous mode that only captures three images. According to Fujifilm the Top-3 and Final-3 modes run at a maximum of 0.6 frames/second.

There are also four self-timer options available: 10 seconds, 2 seconds, Couple Timer, and Group Timer.

Playback Mode

Fujifilm built a ridiculous variety of playback options into the Z30. Firstly, the camera has all the basic options: slideshow, red-eye removal, rotate, copy, etc. Images can also be displayed as 100 thumbnails on a single 10 x 10 grid on the LCD.

The camera also includes a number of post-processing picture effects that Fujifilm strangely calls Blog Mode. Images can be trimmed to fit specific aspect ratios (4:1, 8:3, 16:9, 3:2, 4:3, 1:1, 3:4, 1:3) and effects can be applied to adjust the brightness, contrast, and color of your images. There are also options called illustration, painting effect, miniature effect, face mosaic, and drop shadow.

Custom Image Presets

The camera has the following scene modes: Auction, Portrait, Landscape, Sport, Night, Night Tripod, Sunset, Snow, Beach, Museum, Party, Flower, and Text. There is also an auto scene recognition mode that has the camera analyze the frame and automatically choose the correct scene mode for you (the feature only chooses from portrait, landscape, night, macro, backlight portrait, and night portrait).

Controls

Manual Controls

The Fujifilm Z30 features a manual mode in the camera's shooting mode menu. Strangely, this mode doesn't allow for any manual control over shutter speed or aperture. All it lets you do is apply exposure compensation, adjust ISO,choose white balance presets, and select an autofocus mode. Is this seriously what passes as a manual mode these days?

Focus

The camera doesn't offer manual focus, an omission that's typical of compact point-and-shoots. There are two autofocus methods — AF Center and AF Multi — and both utilize a contrast-detect through-the-lens (TTL) system. In normal focus mode the camera has a focus range of 2 feet to infinity (60cm - infinity). In macro mode, this range goes from 3.2 inches - 9.8 feet (8cm to 3m).

ISO

ISO settings can be controlled in manual mode. The sensitivity can be set to Auto, 64, 100, 200, 400, 800, or 1600. A number of scene modes (like the night modes) will automatically set the ISO to high sensitivity levels in order to capture a crisp image and reduce blur.

White Balance

In addition to auto, there are six white balance presets on the Z30 — Fine, Shade, Fluorescent light (Daylight), Fluorescent light (Warm White), Fluorescent light (Cool White), and Incandescent light. Since Fujifilm went to such lengths to six white balance presets, we would have liked to see them throw in a manual option as well.

Metering

The camera uses through-the-lens (TTL) 256-zone metering and there are no different options for metering ranges or systems. There is manual exposure compensation that can be adjusted with a range of -2 to +2.

Shutter Speed

The Z30 uses a combined mechanical and electronic shutter. In auto mode the shutter speed won't drop below 1/4 of a second, but in all other modes the range is 3 seconds to 1/1000 of a second. There is no manual shutter speed control on the camera, but a few scene modes (like Night Tripod) will automatically set the camera to slow shutter speeds.

Aperture

No manual aperture control is present on the Z30, but the lens has an aperture range of f/3.7 - f/8.0 in wide angle and f/4.2 - f/9.0 at telephoto.

Image Stabilization

The Z30 doesn't have optical image stabilization, which makes sense because we're dealing with a fairly inexpensive camera here. Fujifilm does tout its anti-blur scene mode as offering 'picture stabilization,' but all it does is use fast shutter speeds to reduce blur—no special image stabilization is involved.

Picture Quality & Size Options

The Z30 doesn't have as many size options as some compact cameras, but it still offers a fair share:

3,648 x 2,736 (10M)

3,648 x 2,432 (9M, 3:2 format)

2,592 x 1,944 (5M)

2,048 x 1,536 (3M)

1,600 x 1,200 (2M)

640 x 480 (0.3M)

For 10-megapixel images (the maximum size setting) images can be set to fine or normal quality.

Picture Effects

There are many funky picture effects available in the playback menu as post-processing features (under the Blog Trimming menu). In shooting mode you can access the FinePix Color option that will allow you to take images using F-Chrome for a saturation boost, F-B&W for black and white images, and F-Standard which is the normal setting.

Conclusion

We didn't go crazy over the Fujifilm Finepix Z30, but for a low-end model that costs around $180 that isn't very surprising. The best features of the camera are its compact size, portable shape, 10-megapixel capability, and 3x optical zoom. The overall design wasn't too impressive, and in our time spent handling the device it felt cluttered and flawed. Buttons are too close together, the USB port is poorly located, and the body doesn't feel durable or look elegant.

If you like what the Z30 has to offer, check out the waterproof Fujifilm Z33WP, which has similar specs plus a ruggedized body and only costs an extra $20 bucks.