Fujifilm Finepix Z30

Full Review

Looks is one department in which the Finepix Z30 has no problems. A curvy exterior in a range of color options, light weight (125g) and compact form factor (that can place it even amongst ultracompacts) – Fuji has tried its best to make the Z30 look more expensive that it actually is. A 2.7-inch 230k pixel screen occupies most of the rear of the small camera with tiny buttons crammed to the right of the display. It has a non-protruding 3x zoom lens that has 9 steps when zooming (many models only have 5-6 steps), giving slightly finer control to users while composing shots. In good indoor light, we found the Z30 surprisingly quick to focus – it is as fast as the Canon PowerShot A1100 IS, if not faster. Low light performance was above average – though focusing was a tad slower, it still locked focus most times and the compromise between noise (reduction) vs details (retained) seemed ok. With video shooting, compression artifacts were evident. Despite an 8Mbps total bitrate, the video quality was still bad. We have seen some cell phones that do better. Navigating though the menu and accessing settings is not quite the easiest thing to do, thanks to the tiny buttons, four of which multitask as direction buttons. There’s a dedicated button to start / stop video shooting, but given the sub par video quality you are not likely to be using it often.

Bottom Line

The Z30 is petite. but difficult to figure out. If you are looking for a compact camera at the price of usual point and shoot, the 10MP, 3x optical zoom Z30 is for you. But don’t expect great results.