Avalanche of New Fujifilm Digital Cameras

Theresa Stone

The folks at Fujifilm must have been throwing back Red Bulls like crazy, because at CES this week the company announced a whole crowd of new cameras. I’ll give you the full list (with hyperlinks to their relevant press releases) first, then a bit more information about models that are of most interest to creative pros.
FinePix HS20EXR / HS22EXR
FinePix F550EXR
FinePix F500EXR
FinePix XP30
FinePix S4000 / S4050
FinePix S3200 / S3250
FinePix S2950 / S2990
FinePix T300 / T305
FinePix T200 / T205
FinePix JX350 / JX350
FinePix Z90 / Z91
FinePix AV200
FinePix AX300
FinePix JV200
Fujifilm hopes that its FinePix HS20EXR (on sale this March for $499) will satisfy shooters who don’t like to lug around an SLR camera but want more control and capabilities than are in most point-and-shoots. The 16-megapixel HS20EXR includes a 30x optical zoom. It can capture stills (raw and JPG) at 8 Frames per second (fps) and HD movies at 1080p. The tiltable LCD automatically changes from LCD to EVF. Fujifilm says that the cameras’ perform well even in low light.

The company’s new FinePix F500EXR and the FinePix F550EXR models aren’t as close to an SLR as the HS20EXR, but they seem like capable compact models. 12fps on The F500EXR can shoot stills at 12fps, and the F550EXR can churn ’em out at 11 fps. Both also capture HD video. Their new “Pro Focus Mode” feature combines two or three frames to create a blurred foreground and background while maintaining detail in the middle ground. Doing this in-camera (instead of in software, like Photoshop Extended’s image stacking) is an interesting idea. These models will be for sale in March for $329 (the FinePix F500EXR) and $349 (the F550EXR).

The 14-megapixel FinePix XP30 (an update to the XP10, less than a year old) is ready for rugged conditions: It’s dustproof, waterproof, shockproof, freezeproof, and has a GPS chip that embeds the coordinates of each shot’s location into the photo’s metadata. The XP30 will be on sale in March, but Fujifilm isn’t telling us its price yet.