Fujifilm S2000HD Exposure

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Some slight shifts in color accuracy and oversaturation in strong reds and blues, but still good overall results.

Saturation. The Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD oversaturates strong reds and blues quite a bit, obliterating detail, especially in the reds. Yellows are actually undersaturated a small amount, as are some green tones. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. Here, with the color balanced properly for the light source, the FinePix S2000HD's Caucasian skin tones had a slight pink cast, while darker skin tones were pushed toward yellow. Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. The FinePix S2000HD showed several color shifts relative to the correct mathematical translation of colors in its subjects, pushing cyan toward blue, yellow toward orange, and green toward yellow. Hue is "what color" the color is.

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Best color with Manual white balance, pretty good exposure as well.

Color balance indoors under incandescent lighting was quite reddish in Auto white balance mode, while the Incandescent setting produced more of a warm, sepia-like cast. Manual mode produced the most accurate overall color, though it too appeared just a little magenta in some places and overall slightly cool. Still, white values measure out to be almost perfect in Manual mode. The Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD required no exposure compensation. Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.

Outdoors, daylight
High contrast outdoors with limited shadow detail, though pretty good color.

Outdoors, the Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD had some trouble with the harsh lighting, producing very high contrast with limited midtones. Shadow detail falls apart, due mostly to the effects of noise and the camera's efforts to suppress that noise. Overall color looks pretty good, though reds are a bit strong, as is the blue sky.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Resolution
Moderate resolution, 1,200 to 1,300 lines of strong detail.

Our laboratory resolution chart revealed relatively distinct line patterns down to about 1,300 lines per picture height in he horizontal direction, and about 1,200 in the vertical direction. (Some would doubtless argue for a higher lines/picture height rating, but we judge the aliasing that appears shortly after 1,200 - 1,300 lines as an indication of the camera's true resolution.) Extinction began just after 1,800 lines. Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Fine detail is slightly soft from both noise and noise suppression, though high contrast areas show noticeable edge enhancement.

Sharpness. The Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD's detail definition suffers from both noise pixels and noise suppression. In high contrast areas, the camera produces bright enhancement artifacts, such as along the trim in the crop above left. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows fairly high noise suppression, with the darker areas of hair showing very limited detail. Individual strands appear to melt into the shadows. Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

ISO & Noise Performance
Poor noise handling at the lower sensitivity settings, getting worse at the higher settings. At the highest sensitivities, noise and noise suppression are both very strong.

The Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD handles image noise by smudging detail at ISOs 100 and 200, and it only gets worse at ISO 400. At ISOs 800 and 1,600, noise suppression becomes so strong that the entire image is blurry, yet the circular grain pattern persists and the resulting images look like watercolors. The FinePix S2000HD limits the resolution at the 3,200 and 6,400 settings to 2,592 x 1,944 pixels, but results here are still very blurry and very noisy.

Extremes: Sunlit and low light tests
High resolution with strong overall detail, though limited shadow detail. Very high contrast. Limited low-light capabilities.

Sunlight. The Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD had some trouble with the deliberately harsh lighting in the test above, and produced very high contrast. Highlights are hot, and shadows are deep, with a very limited midtone range. Detail in the shadows is very limited, from both noise and noise suppression. At +0.7 EV, highlights are strong, but this was the best exposure for the face. Be sure to use fill flash in situations like the one shown above; and it's better to shoot in the shade when possible.

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here.)

Low light. The Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD was limited in terms of low-light performance, not capturing a bright image at the lowest light level until ISO 1,600. At ISO 100, images were only bright to the one foot-candle light level, with increasing performance as the sensitivity was increased, despite a four-second maximum exposure time. Color balance was good overall with the Auto white balance setting, though there was a greenish tint at lower light levels and higher ISOs. The camera's AF system was able to focus down to just above the 1/16 foot-candle light level without AF assist enabled, and to total darkness with AF assist.

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that level should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) For such applications, you may have better luck with a digital SLR camera, but even there, you'll likely need to set the focus manually. For information and reviews on digital SLRs, refer to our SLR review index page.

Coverage and Range
A powerful flash at close range, with fairly uniform coverage, though not a match for the camera's 15x optical zoom. Our indoor test shots required much less than average exposure compensation.

Flash coverage was uneven at wide angle. At telephoto, the target was too far out of range for the 15x optical zoom lens. In the Indoor test, the Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD's flash exposed our subject well at its default setting, requiring no positive exposure compensation. The camera's Slow-Sync flash mode produced much brighter and more even results, and actually required a decrease in exposure. Both images show slight pinkish casts from the background incandescent lighting, though the Slow-Sync image has the stronger of the two.

ISO 100 Range. At wide angle and ISO 100, flash intensity began to decrease from about 9 feet on. At telephoto, flash power was brightest at 6 feet, decreasing in intensity from 7 feet on.

Manufacturer Specified Flash Test. In the shots above, the FinePix S2000HD performs as Fujifilm says it will, though it had to raise the sensitivity quite a bit at both wide angle and telephoto settings, resulting in very poor quality images with smudgy detail. Our standard test method for flash range uses a fixed setting of ISO 100, to provide a fair basis of comparison between cameras. We've now also begun shooting two shots using the manufacturer-specified camera settings, at the range the company claims for the camera, to assess the validity of the specific claims.

Print Quality
Usable print quality at 11x14 inches. ISO 400 images are soft but usable at 8x10, ISO 800 shots are better at 5x7.

Prints from the Fujifilm S2000HD could be better. Shots at ISO 100 are usable at 11x14 inches, but detail is poor and color is washed out. Results are better at 8x10, though the problem of washed out color persists and increases as you go up the ISO scale.

ISO 200 shots are also good at 8x10, and only usable at ISO 400 at this size. ISO 800 shots are okay at 5x7, but color is faded and blown out, especially reds. ISO 1,600 shots are faded, blown, and soft at even 4x6 inches, and really not usable.

Though the Fujifilm S2000HD has ISO 3,200 and 6,400 settings, they're of reduced resolution, and are not usable for anything but fuzzy thumbnails on a computer screen. This is far outside of what we normally expect from Fujifilm FinePix cameras. We suggest you look elsewhere for better performance, but if you must have the S2000HD for its movie abilities, stick to ISO 400 and below for your snapshots, and keep your enlargements to 8x10 inches.

Testing hundreds of digital cameras, we've found that you can only tell just so much about a camera's image quality by viewing its images on-screen. Ultimately, there's no substitute for printing a lot of images and examining them closely. For this reason, we now routinely print sample images from the cameras we test on our Canon Pro9000 studio printer, and on the Canon iP5200 here in the office. (See the Canon PIXMA Pro9000 review for details on that model.)