Fuji Fine Pix S200HD

[andylloyd]

Aye up all,
after many years my Fuji Fine Pix has given the ghost up
Have seen conflicting reviews on the HD mentioned above.
Does it actually take XD cards or not?
Also how do you rate this camera?
Cheers
Andy

 

[RJ]

Aye up all,
after many years my Fuji Fine Pix has given the ghost up
Have seen conflicting reviews on the HD mentioned above.
Does it actually take XD cards or not?
Also how do you rate this camera?
Cheers
Andy

If you want it for anything more than casual pix for your Fotopic/Youtube collections then I would advise against it. Remember that HD camcorders cost £400 upwards so the quality won't be anything breathtaking. I also hear that the pictures taken with it suffer a degree of chromatic aberration. I was going to buy one and read a wide range of reviews, but I decided that it's not much of an upgrade from my old S6500, so I ended up buying a Sony Handycam camcorder instead.

Also some HD videos I've seen on Youtube seem to suffer from poor frame rates. That either could be down to my own computer (bearing in mind I have 8mb broadband) or the owner's inadequate computer resources to process the HD videos to an acceptable frame rate. Either way, it does require a higher end PC to handle, so unless you have a new PC or intend to watch your videos back on widescreen TVs then it's probably worth sticking with SD for now.

 

[andylloyd]

If you want it for anything more than casual pix for your Fotopic/Youtube collections then I would advise against it. Remember that HD camcorders cost £400 upwards so the quality won't be anything breathtaking. I also hear that the pictures taken with it suffer a degree of chromatic aberration. I was going to buy one and read a wide range of reviews, but I decided that it's not much of an upgrade from my old S6500, so I ended up buying a Sony Handycam camcorder instead.

Also some HD videos I've seen on Youtube seem to suffer from poor frame rates. That either could be down to my own computer (bearing in mind I have 8mb broadband) or the owner's inadequate computer resources to process the HD videos to an acceptable frame rate. Either way, it does require a higher end PC to handle, so unless you have a new PC or intend to watch your videos back on widescreen TVs then it's probably worth sticking with SD for now.

Cheers for that.
My old finepix f-450 is totally knackered so I wanna step up a mark or too
Whilst visiting relatives this weekend I popped into a photography shop and had a look at it and it seemed ok.
Just shots and vids is all I need it for to be honest nothing over the top about the HD side

Cheers
Andy

 

[rail-britain]

I've just bought a FujiFilm S2000HD last week to replace my Premier DC-4311
The purpose of this purchase is to record my 14 day First Class All Line Rail Rover between 20 June and 04 July

I was going to buy it from Argos, to use up my nectar points, but it was consistently out of stock and when I did receive an email to advise it was back in stock even using it within 4 hours it was still out of stock

I bought mine from b4udirect.com
£170
I took the camera bag and Class 6 4GB SDHC bundle, with an extra SDHC card
£202 all in

Photo results so far can be seen here :
Lune Gorge - one of the first times I have successfully taken photo of a Tornado GR1
Scout Green South
Carluke
Lockerbie
South of Carstairs

Video footage
My advice here is use ONLY the SDHC cards, otherwise you will have to wait for the camera to save the data which can result in jerky images on playback, especially with recordings made in HD
Scout Green South : HD 16:9
Scout Green South : Standard 4:3

 

[martyn29]

Canon HG20 anyone? I would like to do all my recordings in High Definition

 

[andylloyd]

I've just bought a FujiFilm S2000HD last week to replace my Premier DC-4311
The purpose of this purchase is to record my 14 day First Class All Line Rail Rover between 20 June and 04 July

I was going to buy it from Argos, to use up my nectar points, but it was consistently out of stock and when I did receive an email to advise it was back in stock even using it within 4 hours it was still out of stock

I bought mine from b4udirect.com
£170
I took the camera bag and Class 6 4GB SDHC bundle, with an extra SDHC card
£202 all in

Photo results so far can be seen here :
Lune Gorge - one of the first times I have successfully taken photo of a Tornado GR1
Scout Green South
Carluke
Lockerbie
South of Carstairs

Video footage
My advice here is use ONLY the SDHC cards, otherwise you will have to wait for the camera to save the data which can result in jerky images on playback, especially with recordings made in HD
Scout Green South : HD 16:9
Scout Green South : Standard 4:3

I'm liking the shots and the HD footage.
Brill shots and footage

 

[rail-britain]

I've added some more videos on YouTube, taken at Edinburgh Waverley on the morning of Sunday 14 June 2009
Sadly these videos have IS mode (Image Stabilsation) active and you can see what effect it has
I am fairly steady when taking video footage, having had a SONY TR-425 in the past, and so have now switched it off
However, I would recommend IS mode for photos, it is excellent

 

[andylloyd]

Just a little update...
I managed yesterday to purchase this camera, am still trying to get used to it.
Once i've settled down with it I will post a few shots

 

[rail-britain]

Is it the S200HD or S2000HD ?
I've nw uploaded all the videos from my recent 14 day ALR, but I've still to upload the photos

 

[andylloyd]

is it the s200hd or s2000hd ?
I've nw uploaded all the videos from my recent 14 day alr, but i've still to upload the photos

s2000hd

 

[rail-britain]

So you do indeed have the same one as myself

 

[andylloyd]

So you do indeed have the same one as myself

Aye,
it seems canny enough
Have started to put it through its paces.
Biggest test yet will be for the Sunderland Airshow
I will be vieiwing from Tynemouth I think!
Without fail some shots will be going up on my fotopic account

Please find below direct Link :-
http://andrew745.fotopic.net/c1730526.html

 

[rail-britain]

Aye, it seems canny enough
Have started to put it through its paces.
Biggest test yet will be for the Sunderland Airshow
I will be vieiwing from Tynemouth I think!
Without fail some shots will be going up on my fotopic account

On my first day of use I managed to take photos of some low flying RAF jets at Lune Gorge
They weren't great, but my previous camera would just be turning on as they left the valley!

The main issue I have with FotoPic is the images I take have such a large filesize, meaning the high MP is wasted

Works much better on video mode, HD works out at about 1MB per minute

 

[andylloyd]

On my first day of use I managed to take photos of some low flying RAF jets at Lune Gorge
They weren't great, but my previous camera would just be turning on as they left the valley!

The main issue I have with FotoPic is the images I take have such a large filesize, meaning the high MP is wasted

Works much better on video mode, HD works out at about 1MB per minute

I have yet to get an HD SD Card for my camera, however I did venture down to Tynemouth for part of the display. Got to see the Red Arrows but that was all, got a tad cloudy so couldnt be bothered waiting for the sky to clear. When I got back to the flat I was greeted by an Apache and a lynx flying back to Newcastle Airport from the show.
Snaps will be up later

 

[rail-britain]

I have yet to get an HD SD Card for my camera

Don't get confused, there are no HD SD cards, the latest high capacity cards are SDHC
Early card readers cannot read / write SDHC, as I have found with my HP Pavilion
The alternative is to connect via USB or use a separate USB card reader that is compatable with SDHC
The way I get round this is to save on my laptop then transfer on my network to the desktop PC

The internal 55MB memory is plenty enough for photos but not enough for videos
If your devices are not compatable with SDHC then get two 512MB memory cards
If your devices are SDHC compatable, then get one 4GB one
This is enough for ten hours of video
Given the maximum video time is 15 minutes it is likely you will run out of batteries before filling the memory card!

I made the mistake of buying two 4GB SDHC cards, the second one has "never" been used
The advantage of SDHC cards is the camera can write to the card much quicker than a standard card

 

[andylloyd]

Don't get confused, there are no HD SD cards, the latest high capacity cards are SDHC
Early card readers cannot read / write SDHC, as I have found with my HP Pavilion
The alternative is to connect via USB or use a separate USB card reader that is compatable with SDHC
The way I get round this is to save on my laptop then transfer on my network to the desktop PC

The internal 55MB memory is plenty enough for photos but not enough for videos
If your devices are not compatable with SDHC then get two 512MB memory cards
If your devices are SDHC compatable, then get one 4GB one
This is enough for ten hours of video
Given the maximum video time is 15 minutes it is likely you will run out of batteries before filling the memory card!

I made the mistake of buying two 4GB SDHC cards, the second one has "never" been used
The advantage of SDHC cards is the camera can write to the card much quicker than a standard card

Cheers,
as part of the package I got a 4GB SDHC card with it.....
Am just trying to figure all of the uses out now....

 

[rail-britain]

Note that when you insert a SD card, the internal memory does not get used by default

 

[Teaboy1]

Hi there, hope you can get to grips with the Fuji, the SDHC is the way to go and ALWAYS ALWAYS buy as big a memory as you can afford. I bought a 16GB with my machine and even if I dont download the previous 2 days work before hand, I still have enough reserve to do another 2 days work, so size matters when dealing with HiDef.
I would however fully recommend buying a mono pod for use at stations and a tri-pod for elsewhere, they remove the shakes totally compared to hand-held. With a mono pod you eliminate the up-down plane-of-movement altogether, you can dip by leaning forwards, etc.........Im sure you get the idea....! And on a station no tripods allowed, so a mono is the way to go.
Forget sending anything HD to Youtube, you probably have to buy the AVS converter from their site before your videos playback correctly. Its about $39 or $49 depending on what how often you use it.
I had 2 Fuji FinePix's for several years and found them great little machines but for bigger stuff you would be better off with Nikon / Canon if its with your budget.

 

[rail-britain]

I've not had any need for a tripod, yet
Turning on both the stability and anti-shake has given a fairly smooth, but not perfect, very still video footage and with time I am getting better at this

Uploading of HD videos to YouTube is also very easy, no need for conversion
It is saved in mp4 format and uploaded directly
However, it does take YouTube about an hour per MB to convert from SD to HD

I accidently shot my first video in SD, but all the others videos were shot in HD

 

[Teaboy1]

May one be permitted to see your mp4 format video on YT? I shoot in mts and as such its not much use for 'owt until its converted. I find that there is a 1 hour cutoff limit for uploads, any longer and YT will trash it-presumably because it ties up resources....and the file size becomes too big. When I convert to mp4 the quality is lost and the result is very weak and soft images. My machine generates about 1 MB per second when shooting.
I will guarantee better results with a mono, especially if you use the zoom.

 

[rail-britain]

May one be permitted to see your mp4 format video on YT?

Search railbritain and you should find them, if not try "Scout Green South"

I uploaded a few of these whilst on Virgin Trains services between Euston and Glasgow, clearly longer than 1 hour!