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When Fujifilm announced the Finepix S200EXR ultrazoom in late July 2009, Fujifans everywhere may have been hoping for a design to close the zoom gap between the 18x of Fuji’s top offerings and the 24 and 26x competition. That wait will continue – the S200 is the anointed successor to Fuji’s S100fs – but while the S200 has a lens with the identical 14.3x zoom multiplication of the older camera, its 30.5 to 436mm (35mm equivalent) manual zoom lens is a bit longer.
But the big news with the S200 is the inclusion of Fuji’s new Super CCD EXR sensor and EXR processor, hardware developed by Fuji with the avowed purpose of mimicking the performance of the human eye as closely as possible. In Fuji’s own words:
The Super CCD EXR provides superior picture quality, enabling a “3-in-1″ sensor combination of Fine Capture Technology (High Resolution), Pixel Fusion Technology (High Sensitivity & Low Noise), and Dual Capture Technology (Wide Dynamic Range). With an innovative color filter array and image processing technology, the EXR ensures an advanced reproduction in imaging with exceptionally balanced quality.
Super CCD EXR technology debuted back in February in the Fuji F200EXR and has also appeared in the F70EXR announced with the S200.
The S200 gets a bump up in resolution to 12 megapixels (up from 11.1 megapixels in the S100) on its 1/1.6″ sensor (which is physically a bit smaller than the 2/3″ sensor of the S100). Full manual controls return in addition to the usual suite of automatic and specific scene shooting modes and a few interesting EXR technology-driven options that we’ll discuss in more depth further into the review. The camera can shoot RAW, JPEG or RAW/JPEG combinations and utilizes SD/SDHC memory media. There is about 47MB of internal memory.
Fuji includes a battery and charger, lens cap and strap, shoulder strap, USB and A/V cables, a basic printed user’s manual, CD-ROM complete manual, and CD-ROM software with each camera. There was a cautionary note from Fuji in the box explaining that the bundled FinePix Viewer would not be able to decode RAW files until an update was produced in November 2009, but the version included on the software worked fine, so perhaps Fuji is ahead of schedule with their RAW processing in the S200.