Fujifilm FinePix HS20 16 MP Digital Camera with EXR BSI CMOS High Speed Sensor and Fujinon 30x Wide Angle Optical Zoom Lens

2 Replies to “Fujifilm FinePix HS20 16 MP Digital Camera with EXR BSI CMOS High Speed Sensor and Fujinon 30x Wide Angle Optical Zoom Lens”

1. DarthRad says:

   May 23, 2011 at 4:14 pm

   49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Great superzoom camera, what the HS10 should have been, March 31, 2011

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   DarthRad (CA United States) –

   Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Fujifilm FinePix HS20 16 MP Digital Camera with EXR BSI CMOS High Speed Sensor and Fujinon 30x Wide Angle Optical Zoom Lens (Electronics)

   The HS20 shares the same body and lens as the HS10, but has been beefed up with much faster and more capable electronics. It is what the brain-dead HS10 should have been. After all, it should be expected that one of the biggest uses for a superzoom camera would be shooting live action long distance shots and sporting events. This sort of photography makes full use of the superzoom lens, but does need very fast focusing and fast shot to shot times.

   I had earlier purchased, reviewed, and returned the HS10. The camera had terrific features, but was just too slow for anything more than predictable portrait shots.

   The HS20 focuses faster and processes and stores images faster than the HS10. Not as fast as a full fledged DSLR, but close enough. An example of a few runs I did on this camera: At 16Meg Fine resolution, with RAW turned off, I could get off 16 shots in 20 seconds, manually clicking away. With RAW and JPG both turned on, the speed dropped sharply to 5 shots in 20 seconds; with only RAW turned on – 6 shots in 20 seconds. At the opposite end of the spectrum, at 2Meg Normal resolution, with RAW turned off, I could get off 22 shots in 20 seconds. With RAW and JPG both turned on, the speed dropped to 9 shots in 20 seconds. The setting I’m most likely to use – 8Meg Fine resolution with no RAW – shoots at 20 shots in 20 seconds, one per second, which is pretty good. Certain settings help improve the speed slightly – autofocus continuously, turn off the automatic picture review and red eye features, etc.

   The feature with the high speed series of shots has also improved from the HS10, with a maximum run of 32 shots from 3fps to 11fps. This is much better than the HS10, which only allowed for a short run of 6 shots. The maximum resolution of the images drops from 16M to 4M as you go from the smallest series of 4 shots at 3fps to the full 32 shots at 11fps

   The video also has improved. Both the HS10 and the HS20 have 1920×1080 HD video, but the HS20 has a continuous focus mode that adjusts the focus as you track a subject, which the HS10 could not do (although the continuous focus during video on the HS20 is still a bit sluggish, I have to say). The HS20 can do a 30 minute long 1080p HD video segment (I think the HS10 was only 15 minutes). There is also an ultra high speed 320fps video at 320 x 112 resolution which runs for 30 seconds.

   A few quirks and gimmicks on this camera – there is a setting for “silent mode” in the menu. This does indeed turn off all the beeps and artificial shutter clicks. It also turns off the flash! I set the camera to “silent mode” before testing the flash, which then did not fire. For a moment, I thought I had gotten a bad camera with a broken flash. To make this camera silent without turning off the flash, there are two other settings that should be used – volume settings that adjust the volume of the camera beep and the shutter click.

   Another setting gives you an electronic horizontal “level” in the lcd/viewfinder.

   The camera does give you a “heat” warning when you fire off a lot of shots very fast, e.g., fire off a couple rounds of 4M shots at 11 fps for a series of 32 will provoke this warning. So far, though, the camera has kept going even with the heat warning on.

   The camera comes standard with a hard shell (not foldable) bayonet mount “petal” lens hood (unlike the HS10). Yay! What an intelligent idea! This allows you to use a regular thickness 58mm lens filter/protector without causing vignetting at the ultra wide angle lens settings.

   The camera comes with a mini USB cable connector (unlike several of Fuji’s other superzoom cameras, which came with a micro USB plug), and the image/video files transfer directly to your computer without needing any intervening software or SD card reader. One of the most annoying things about the Nikon P100 (which I had also purchased and returned) was the fact that the image files would not transfer directly from the camera to my computer. The HS20 also has an HDMI plug (no cable) and a video plug (with cable)

   Finally, the biggest reason that I have stayed with Fuji cameras – they still use AA batteries! Now I know a lot of people are just the opposite and hate AA batteries and think they are heavy and obsolete. I prefer heavy and obsolete to “expensive, dead, and unavailable”, i.e., your camera stops working just when you need it, which is the truth behind all proprietary rechargeable lithium batteries. In a pinch, AA batteries can be found virtually anywhere in the world, which is absolutely not true for proprietary lithium batteries. As many other reviewers (including me) have mentioned, the key to success with AA batteries is to use only the Sanyo Eneloops, which are without doubt the best ever, far superior to any other rechargeable or alkaline battery. In my…

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2. beas62 says:

   May 23, 2011 at 3:25 pm

   133 of 136 people found the following review helpful:

   
   HS20EXR First Look, January 15, 2011

   By 

   beas62 –

   Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Fujifilm FinePix HS20 16 MP Digital Camera with EXR BSI CMOS High Speed Sensor and Fujinon 30x Wide Angle Optical Zoom Lens (Electronics)

   I had spent my first day with the HS20EXR and was generally very pleased with the functionality and performance. Make no mistake, this is not a DSLR, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. This camera packs some capabilities and features that I would dream to have in one of my DSLRs. Although it’s not a large camera, for those who’ve used the HS10, you’ll already know that the build feels solid and the handling is somewhat like a smaller DSLR. The menu system is fairly easy to navigate and more common functions, like exposure, focus, and flash modes are easily accessible via dedicated controls. Be prepared to spend an hour or so getting familiar with the controls and menus – it may be intimidating if you’re brand new to this type camera, but most experienced photographers will pick it up quickly.

   A couple of early concerns materialized. First, I experience the temperature warning display that has been noted in some early reviews. However, I didn’t see any degradation in performance even with the warning lit. Upon calling Fujifilm, they quickly sent a replacement and I’m happy to say the problem didn’t reoccur to that extent, but later I experienced temp warnings in warmer and more continuous use conditions. Another minor irritant while shooting was that the display froze for a moment while focus was obtained. If shooting a moving object, this could mean the difference in getting or not getting the shot. After some further testing, I discovered that this problem seemed related to the “Multi” focus mode. I did not experience the same degree of delay in Center, Area, or Tracking modes.

   The flexibility in shooting is remarkable, given the standard PSAM controls, plus some really interesting advanced features, there’s few still shooting situations the camera will not handle. Those extras I found very appealing are the EXR High-ISO/Low Noise (SN mode), the Pro Low-Light modes. In SN priority mode, I was able to shoot at higher sensitivities up to ISO 1600 with very low noise and even ISO 3200 was very usable. I’m sure I’ll get flack for this, but I have to admit some shooting modes outperformed my D300. I believe this has more to do with the HS20’s high ISO performance than general lens clarity or image detail, in which most DSLRs excel. The Pro Low-Light mode is another trick-up-the-sleeve that combines 4 exposures taken in rapid succession into one very low noise image even in very dim light.

   Not surprisingly, the HS20 autofocus did seek a little in low light, but not much more than my DSLRs in the same setting. The zoom lens was impressive for such a small package and both wide and full zoom shots were crisp. There are many more modes and options, but none of these bells and whistles would mean much if the end results didn’t deliver. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised at the sharpness of the full sized 16MP images – I really expected to see a lot of artifacts from noise reduction and other in-camera processing. On the contrary, my “pixel peeping” revealed clean edges and very good fine detail. Pictures of my cat actually show individual fine hairs instead of the painterly effect of some compact cameras. It seems like Fuji took lessons from predecessors and managed to squeeze more image quality out of their tiny sensor than many of us expected.

   One of the cool benefits of the CMOS sensor is speed. Once I figured out the continuous shooting modes, I was tickled at being able to fire off 8 fps in full resolution. I also played with the 11 fps mode which works with at 8MP and felt like I was shooting an old movie camera instead of a point and shoot digital.

   One issue of concern to me was the processing speed or write speed of the files to the card. This was a common complaint for the HS10. What I found was that the write speed is improved, but don’t expect DSLR performance. A JPEG Fine image would write to card in under 1 second to my SanDisk Extreme Pro, and a RAW file averaged 4 seconds. Now before you say “WHAT?”, let me explain that that is the write time itself, HOWEVER, due to the internal cache, the camera is ready for the next shot in less time than the write time. I found that generally it was ready almost instantly shooting JPEG and with RAW, there might be a second or two delay for an individual image. In burst mode, the camera was able to cache all images in the burst without pausing, although after capturing the images, the write time again took 4-6 seconds depending on the image sizes. So not a perfect situation, but definitely an improvement over the noted problems of the HS10.

   The video was very easy to use and looks acceptable for simple scenes at wide to normal viewing angles. At full zoom, images were shaky and focus was slow. Plan on using a tripod for long zooms, and careful zooms and panning. With the manual zoom barrel, which is really geared toward still photography,…

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