Both Pentax cameras perform relatively well in this test, despite the higher ISO setting producing more visible noise. They are both let down (especially compared to the TS1 and D10) by the slightly harsher overall appearance, and the poor red eye performance. In terms of sharpness the Z33 is on par with the Pentax and the Olympus Tough 6000. The screen on this camera is relatively large, taking up most of the rear of the camera, so you get a good preview of any image you’ve taken with it. It has so many features that I’ll never make use of them all (You can read about some of them here – http://www.fujifilm.co.uk/consumer/digital/digital-cameras/slim-compact/finepix-z33wp/Features ), but suffice to say it has a timer and screw fitting for a tripod, making self-take photos relatively simple. It also has a good movie facility, which can be good fun if you want to share a moment with the world.

auto power off feature can be disengaged, so the camera must be turned off manually. Supplied Software Towards the edge of the frame the TS1 performance remains better than the D10 due to the less aggressive noise reduction used. You can clearly see more fine detail on the front of the Martini bottle (along with more noise). Though worse than that TS1, with the Canon D10 you can at least still get a basic idea what it's supposed to be a picture of (even if all texture, contrast and fine detail has gone). The other cameras offer varying combinations of noise, artefacts and blurred detail - in other words just what you'd expect from a high resolution compact viewed at a pixel level. The purpose of this group test was to test waterproof cameras, and underwater they all seemed to work pretty well, but the D10 (which seems to have been designed first and foremost for this environment) was both the best performer and the easiest to use, with a clear interface and big buttons. The W60 slips behind here because the interface was not as easy to use, and sharpness and detail was just not as good as the D10.In their own ways both Canon and Panasonic have, with their first attempts at waterproof cameras, shown the segment how to innovate. This leaves you with a really great choice when you only want to take one camera with you to the beach or on that tropical holiday. The hard part now is deciding if you are going to spend more time taking pictures in the water or out of it. Both the TS1 and the D10 are great cameras, and they are joint winners of our waterproof group test. Red-eye removal ON : Red-eye Reduction Auto, Red-eye Reduction & Forced Flash, Suppressed Flash, Red-eye Reduction & Slow Synchro. The Canon did the best job of balancing ambient light and flash to produce a pleasing result that almost looks like flash wasn't used. The Pentax cameras and Fuji weren't far behind, with results that, while obviously flashed, still retain some of the ambient atmosphere of the scene. The Two Olympus cameras and the TS1 retained the least amount of ambient light, due to them using lower ISO settings than other cameras in the group. Both the Olympus cameras also produced the coolest (most blue) result in terms of color balance, followed by the TS1, with the Z33 and W60 sitting somewhere in the middle, then the W80 (which produced a warmer result than the W60), and the D10 producing the warmest result of the group. Flash shot 100% crops: Canon D10

Designed for those who love the great outdoors, the 10MP FinePix Z33WP is a camera that can withstand the elements. So whether you’re surfing the waves, cycling through alpine forests or swooshing down the ski slopes, the FinePix Z33WP won’t let you down. Heavy, unsophisticated noise reduction also removes lots of detail from the image, but if the noise reduction is too low you'll get so much noise that it will appear even in the smallest print. Canon D10

Ratings and recommendations

The Tough 6000 offers movie recording at VGA resolution (640x480) at 30 fps. Movies are recorded in avi format, with a maximum bit rate of 13 Mbit/sec. If you have a fast xD card (H type) you can record movies until the card is full, but on slower xD cards videos are limited to a paltry 10 seconds. Usefully the Tough 6000 counts down instead of up, to show you how much recording time is left on the current card. Optical zoom is not available during movie recording. High ISO settings allow you to shoot in low light without using a tripod or the flash and has become one of the key differentiators between digital SLRs (which, whith theit much larger sensors, are usually pretty good at higher sensitivity settings) and compacts (which aren't). The top sees the power and shutter buttons and overall we found the placement was convenient for all the controls, giving easy access to options. The buttons give you instant access to flash, macro and self-timer options, but a neat video button provides instant video recording. scene recognition identifies the type of shot you compose and automatically sets the camera to one of six scene modes

A camera, to me, was something I used to take fishing with me. However, I’m so impressed with the Fujifilm Z33 WP that I take it almost everywhere with me now. It’s so small that you hardly notice it, but the photographs it takes belie its compact size. The quality of the video recorded with the TS1 was generally quite good. At 720p resolution the M-JPEG video looked sharp and detailed (if sometimes a little noisy) with the AVCHD lite video being a little less sharp to the M-JPEG video (though it is also less the half the file size). You will sometimes see strange artefacts in the video as after zooming and as camera tries to focus and auto focus in movie mode is generally quite slow. At lower resolutions such as VGA the video looks less sharp and detailed than at the highest resolution and moire is much more visible (as you can see in our VGA sample). Audio recorded was generally quite good and there is a built-in wind filter which keeps wind noise low. As far as shooting options go, the Z33WP is fairly lean, as it's designed for simple snapshot photography. There's an Auto mode for general photography, an SR Auto option that analyzes what's in the frame and automatically selects the appropriate scene settings, and 16 scene modes, including one for underwater shooting. Even its Manual mode only allows you to change ISO, exposure compensation, and white balance. The Movie mode is VGA quality, and you don't get use of the zoom lens while recording. Also, if you tend to take a bunch a short movie clips, the Successive Movie mode lets you stitch the clips together into one movie.

Both the D10 and the TS1 have flaws. For the D10 it's the not very compact dimensions, the not very wide zoom lens that extends only from 35mm to 105mm and the VGA-only video recording functionality. For the TS1 it is the soft images at the telephoto end of the zoom range, the sometimes very frustrating-to-use design and ergonomics decisions, the limited underwater ability (3m / 10ft vs 10m / 33ft of the D10), and the rather poor flash performance. Which of these flaws are deal breakers? Only you can decide this, and with the two cameras costing about the same price in most stores, the decision ultimately comes down to those differences. SP: Auction Mode, Portrait, Landscape, Sport, Night, Night(Tripod), Sunset, Snow, Beach, Museum, Party, Flower, Text This night shot scene not only tests the cameras ability to capture detail with as little noise as possible at ISO 1600, but also tests the dynamic range of the sensor. In the area of dynamic range all the sensors displayed about the same, with none of them being able to properly capture the contents of the brightly lit shop window to the bottom right of the frame. Low light flash portrait comparison The W60 and W80 were a little more difficult to hold steady than the Z33, which only is to be expected due to the maximum telephoto reach of 140mm (Z33 only gets to 105mm). With their respective anti-blur modes selected all three cameras managed to keep all the images sharp, which on the surface is quite impressive, but then you have to remember that the image quality at these high ISO settings is pretty dire, and in auto mode you need to rely on the camera to select the anti-blur mode (which is not always guaranteed).

In the studio scene test we saw that none of these cameras performed remarkably well at ISO 1600, and it's the same situation with the night scene test. The Canon, Panasonic and Pentax W60 (all of which performed relatively well in the daylight test) apply quite a lot of noise reduction to the image, leaving them less noisy than the other three cameras in this test, but also destroying a fair amount of fine detail and leaving many noise reduction artefacts, which are most prominently seen in the sky area to the top left of the image. The best of the three is the TS1 which applies much less noise reduction than the D10 and manages to retain quite a lot of detail in the stonework.The W60 has, on paper at least, one of the most impressive movie recording specification in this group. It offers 720p (1280x720) at 15 fps, with a maximum bit rate of 8.5 Mbit/sec, and VGA (640x480) at 30 fps with the same maximum bit rate. Movies are recorded in avi format with M-JPEG compression. The maximum movie size is 2GB, and optical zooming and AF can be enabled during movie recording (though they are not by default). So on, then, to the most important part of this review. And the winners are... Test Runner Up: Pentax Optio W60 Unfortunately, in practice there is no real benefit to using 720p over VGA in the W60. The higher resolution video just looks like a magnified version of the VGA output. The same problems with noise, and compression artifacts are present, and moire is still visible. Of course at half the frame rate, the video is much less smooth and consequently less useful than the 30fps of the VGA version. The quality is not quite as good as that from the D10, but is not terrible and is on a par with the Z33 and Tough 6000. Sound quality is generally good, though like other cameras in the test suffers from wind noise. Unfortunately you cannot control the ISO settings in Auto either, that being an option in the Manual mode. However, you can, at least, leave everything in Manual on auto and set the ISO to a lower value if this seems a persistent problem. The camera itself is small and lightweight. It’s only just over 9cm long and weighs just 110 grammes, without the battery and memory card. I haven’t weighed it with them, but it’s probably only about 150 grammes. You can view the full specifications at http://www.fujifilm.co.uk/consumer/digital/digital-cameras/slim-compact/finepix-z33wp/Specs