We've seen a few digital cameras that are smaller and lighter than the Fujifilm FinePix Z1, but they have tended to be credit card-sized things that are gimmicks. By contrast the FinePix Z1 is a real 5.1-megapixel camera that weighs a mere 146g ready to shoot and measures 90 x 55 x 19mm both open and closed.
Although the Fujifilm has 3x optical zoom, a lens doesn't come rushing out when you turn it on, which presumably means that it must operate inside the body with a mirror to reflect light through 90 degrees.
This clever packaging results in a camera that is all aluminium on the front (once the sliding lens cover is closed) while the back is dominated by the two and half inch LCD screen, which is large by any standards but on this camera looks positively huge.
The control buttons are small aluminium items that look good, work well and are completely appropriate on this camera; however the tiny size has led to some design decisions that we're not too happy about.
As a minor gripe there's no tripod mount on the base of the Z1, but we were more distressed by Fujifilm's decision to use a dock to charge the battery and to transfer photos. As a result the camera casing is very neat as it isn't covered with ports and little rubber plugs to keep the weather out, but it means you are obliged to carry the dock and cables with you when you go on holiday or if you are taking so many photos that you will fill the xD memory card.
As Fujifilm only supplies a 16MB card we can take it as read that you'll be buying a larger card sooner rather than later. You would have expected the 2,592 x 1,944 maximum resolution to result in JPEG file sizes of anything up to 6MB, however all of our test photos were in the range of 1.2 - 1.3MB.
This suggests that there is some extreme compression taking place inside the FinePix Z1 and it brings us to the Achilles heel of this camera, which is that it doesn't take particularly good photos.
Outdoors shots are pleasant enough, but there's little of the detail that you'd expect from a 5-megapixel camera and the 3x optical zoom doesn't draw the subject in sufficiently to make up for that lack. Colour reproduction is pleasant and inoffensive, but unimpressive, with none of that "Wow" factor that you get from really good photos.
Indoors it was much the same story and our test portraits lacked sharpness even when they were taken from two metres away. Macro shots of some coins on a plate were absolutely breathtaking, so the camera certainly has its capabilities, but they won't be of much use to the mainstream user.
A firmware upgrade addressing the image compression issue might help, and it's always possible that we had a duff review camera, as some of Fujifilm's sample images on its Web site look fairly good (and larger than 1.3MB). But despite checking and re-checking the image settings, we were unable to produce high quality photos from our review unit. We suggest you try this one in a shop before you buy.
