The Fujifilm Finepix XP10, newly available in April 2010, is a stylish little ultra-compact camera that invites you to have fun outdoors while taking pictures. It:
is waterproof to 10 ft. under water, perfect for swimming pools, beach, snorkeling (note: do not use in hot water!)
is shockproof up to 3 ft., great for jogging, cycling, or even letting your baby learn to take pictures
is freezeproof down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius)
is dustproof
has 12.2 effective megapixels
has 5x optical zoom and features a Fujinon lens for great clarity; lens focal length is 36-180mm in 35mm film camera terms
takes 720p widescreen, VGA or QVGA video
can zoom optically in video mode (but see note on audio recording below)
is really small and weighs just a little over 5 oz. with battery and SDHC card
uses SDHC memory card, no more xD that was championed by Fuji and Olympus
I bought a green XP10 because I love spending time in the water. I find that, outdoors during the day, the XP10 takes pictures with excellent clarity and excellent color saturation and contrast. Using fill-in flash in daylight truly enhances the picture. Indoors, because the XP10 lacks Fuji's legendary SuperCCD technology, picture quality is average for a compact or super-compact camera. It does have two natural-scene modes where it boosts the ISO (light sensitivity of the image sensor) at the expense of increased noise. I bought my XP10 to be used outdoors, in the pool and at the beach, so I haven't taken many indoor pics.
Video shooting at 720p yields smooth, clear HD video clips. BTW, video size is limited only by the 2GB FAT32 file size limit -this means even if you pop in a 16GB SDHC card, the longest video clip can only go up to 2GB in file size, due to the limit imposed by the FAT32 file system. Video is recorded as motion JPEG in an AVI container, so it can be played on many, many devices, at the expense of slightly larger file sizes than a more compact format like MPEG-2 or MPEG-4.
While you can zoom optically -a feature that every digital camera should have -audio recording's volume level is lowered during zooming. Instead, the camera picks up some noise from the lens mechanism and that noise overwhelms the ambient sounds you want to record, which can be annoying when played back on a large TV. My advise is to use zooming sparingly during video mode. If you want great video recording on a compact digital camera, you should get a Sony or Canon or Panasonic camera (be prepared to pay a lot more for the waterproof feature, though).
Anyway, my sample video clip shows how the camera works under water. The video resolution was set to QVGA (320x240) for easy upload to Amazon, but you should be able to see the amazing clarity both in and out of water.
In summary, the XP10 is a great waterproof, shockproof camera that every water enthusiast should bring along to record fun memories.
0 comments:
Post a Comment