Review: Fujifilm Finepix F40fd digital camera

Digital cameras have come a long way from the big and bulky basic devices of a few years ago.

Sleek is in, along with sophisticated features such as face recognition, which is where Fujifilm’s Finepix F40fd comes in.

The F40fd is the newest model in Fujifilm’s F series and comes with all the features to be expected from a top-of-the-range 8.3-megapixel camera, including the previously mentioned face-detection technology.

It is also the first of the series that accepts standard SD memory cards alongside Fujifilm's XD picture card. The camera is comfortable to hold but it is quite heavy and bulky compared with new-style, slimmer cameras.

This could be down to the 2.5 inch screen, which is big in comparison with the rest of the camera, and around which most of the main activity centres. To the screen's right sits the circular mode button, which accesses a range of features such as the picture stabilisation function, which works very well to ensure that your pictures aren't shaky.

Spinning the wheel clockwise from this feature accesses the natural shot mode which takes two shots: one with the flash and one without, so it's possible to see which looks better. However, those with an indecisive nature may struggle here as both shots were often as good as each other in our testing.

The face-recognition feature has its own dedicated button at the bottom-right of the camera, which seems to be an odd choice until the feature is actually switched on. Unlike most face-detection features, which locate random faces in a crowd and focus on them to take a picture, Fujifilm’s displays a white frame around people's faces.

The person closest to the camera gets a green square which the camera then focuses on to take a picture. Once again, with face recognition switched on, the shot could not be faulted.

Overall, we were very impressed with the Finepix F40fd – although it's bigger than most cameras in its price range, it produced excellent images in most lighting conditions, and the face detection certainly makes portraits easier to shoot.

Vista compatible: Yes