FujiFilm HS10

Any camera that can reach out to a massive 720mm in 35mm terms has to be a huge unwieldy beast right? Wrong. FujiFilm’s HS10 has a 30X optical zoom lens but is surprisingly compact for a superzoom. It also boasts a tilting LCD, full HD video, RAW file capture and a CMOS sensor, so it’s feature-packed.

The HS10’s handling and ergonomics are excellent, with the well-weighted controls falling right to hand. There’s no twiddling of a little lever to zoom as the HS10 whips from a wide 24mm to full extension with a quick quarter turn on the lens-mounted zoom ring. The lens is a handy F2.8 at the wide end but quickly closes to F5.6 as it’s zoomed in. The automatic modes work reliably and the HS10 is very useable in the manual modes; a well laid out user manual is supplied on the CD, which makes it easy to get familiar with the options and settings. For a superzoom, it’s reasonably light but the body feels slightly low rent, with too much shiny plastic on display.
A dedicated rechargeable battery would have been a better bet than the four AA batteries, but all in all, it’s a well designed unit.

There’s a wide choice of basic shooting modes on offer (landscape, sport, flower etc.) along with interesting advanced options such as panorama, motion remover and low light mode, which generally work as described. The HS10 can shoot stills at a blazing 10fps, albeit only for seven frames, and can capture movies at up to 1,000fps at smaller resolutions.

The LCD tilts vertically but doesn’t swivel horizontally; still it’s perfect for video sessions, allowing the HS10 to be firmly braced. The screen is bright but only displays 230,000 dots, so edges can look a little jagged. Sensors activate the electronic viewfinder (EVF) as soon as the camera is held to the face; it’s contrasty and reasonably detailed but looks as if it’s located in a long tunnel. Its 200,000 dot resolution also means that individual pixels are discernable, which can be distracting.