Review: Fujifilm Finepix F31fd digital camera

Fujifilm's latest entry in its Finepix range is the 6-megapixel F31fd; the 'fd' at the end there indicates it houses Fujifilm's new Face Detection feature.

While the Finepix F31fd isn't as compact as Canon's Ixus range, its slightly chunkier design has the benefit of making it more comfortable to hold. At the rear of the camera is a bright 2.5in LCD screen with an anti-reflective coating, which makes viewing it outdoors much easier, while a selection of small but easily accessed menu buttons sits to the right.

However, the main draw of the F31fd is its Face Detection feature. This means the camera will constantly scan for and focus on the face of anyone in shot, rather than any objects in the foreground, when a picture is being taken.

As soon as a face is located, a green box is placed around it in the LCD viewfinder. This box then follows the face as it moves around the scene. In tests, we found it worked extremely well and we were particularly impressed with how fast the camera picked up faces. It does this by looking for standard features of a face (i.e. two eyes, nose and a mouth) and therefore won't work with profile shots or where one eye is hidden from view, but it has no problem detecting people wearing glasses.

It's an optional feature that can be activated via a dedicated button on the back of the camera, but if you're taking portrait shots and want to be sure the focus is locked on your subject and not some other foreground object, we would definitely recommend using it.

If you want to see the Face Detection feature in action, check out our video review of the camera.

Along with its Face Detection technology, Fujifilm makes much of the camera's ability to shoot at ISO 3200 - the idea being it can shoot in low light conditions without resorting to the flash or long shutter speeds. However, image noise always goes hand in hand with high ISO settings and we would only recommend using anything above ISO 800 as a last resort - for example if you're taking a picture where flash photography isn't allowed.

The camera also appeared to be a little too eager to brag about its high ISO settings - at times we found it selecting ISO 800 when shooting in reasonably well lit indoor conditions when something like ISO 200 would have been fine. You can, however, override the ISO setting if you switch to Manual mode.

Overall image quality is good, but if you crop in 100 per cent you'll see image noise causing some quality issues, even when shooting at ISO 100. That said, if you're not planning to print out extra large photos and won't be cropping in on detail too much, it's not really a problem as you're unlikely to notice it. Occasional purple fringing was apparent in areas of high contrast, but colour reproduction and the camera's auto-exposure decisions were both good.

Other features include a 3x optical zoom lens, 640x480 movie mode at 30fps (frames per second) and 26MB of internal memory - you'll need to purchase an Xd Picture Card sooner rather than later. Although there's no full manual mode, both shutter and aperture priority settings are available.

The Finepix F31fd has plenty going for it, and the Face Detection technology is a real bonus - especially for novice snappers fed up with blurred portrait shots. There are plenty of alternative cameras in this price bracket, including some with similar features to detect faces, so it's worth checking out our other digital camera reviews before purchasing.

Also consider:
Leica D-Lux 3
An ultra-compact camera with sophisticated manual controls and a widescreen display

Nikon Coolpix S9
A stylish and compact digicam with some interesting features

Samsung NV7 OPS
An unusual design that refuses to join the megapixel war

All digital camera reviews

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