Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR

Megapixels. What are they good for? Well, up to a point they’re good for increasing the detail in your photos. But beyond about 8MP there’s no real advantage in a compact snapper. That hasn’t stopped manufacturers increasing the count in order to sell more cameras though.

Breaking the mould

With the F200EXR, Fujifilm is aiming to make some practical use of all those pixels. What you can do with the much-ballyhooed EXR sensor in this camera is gang pairs of pixel sensors together. The downside is that reduces your shots to 6-megapixels. The upside is two new shooting modes.

Depeche Mode

There’s a High ISO, Low Noise mode, and there’s a D-Range Priority mode. We’re not at all convinced by the high ISO mode though. Shots at ISO 1600 might be marginally better than some other compacts but they still look dreadful, with horrible amounts of noise and no sense of subtlety at all. So that’s a fairly poor start then.

Dynamic light on the horizon

Much more impressive is the high-dynamic-range EXR mode, which does have a real benefit. Activate it, take a shot of a landscape and the Fuji can pull more detail out of the shadows and keep hold of more sky detail. The effect is subtle but it really works. And you’ll still get 6 megapixels in your shots, which is more than enough for printing at up to A4.

Elsewhere the F200EXR doesn’t lack any of the features you’ll find on other current high-end compacts. Zoom right out and you’ll get a proper 28mm-equivalent field of view, for genuine wide-angle shots. Zoom in and the telephoto end of the range gives you 140mm equivalent, which matches or beats most of the competition. Optical image stabilisation does a good job of keeping camera shake to a minimum when you’re zoomed right in. At 28mm the lens is a little soft at the edges but it’s nothing you’ll notice unless you’re looking hard.

There are a few downsides. This isn’t the camera for you if you want to use it as a camcorder, with a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 against the HD video of new rivals like the Canon IXUS 110. It’s a bit heavy and chunky too, at an inch thick in places. The upside of that is it feels like a proper camera instead of a piece of jewellery that will crumple like tin foil at the first opportunity.

And heck, we like it. It’s got at least one genuinely useful new feature, it’s well-built and, aside from HD video, it’s lacking nothing serious that you’d find elsewhere. You pay for the privilege but you’ll get a camera that will probably still be going after some of the fashion waifs have left the catwalk.