An experimental study has been performed to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of fin and tube heat exchanger. The existing transient and steady methods are very difficult to apply for the measurements of heat transfer coefficients of a thin heat transfer model. In this study the lumped capacitance method was adopted. The heat transfer coefficients were measured by using the lumped capacitance method based on the liquid crystal thermography. The method is validated through impinging jet and flat plate flow experiments. The two experiments showed that the results of the lumped capacitance method with polycarbonate model showed very good agreements with those of the transient method with acryl model. The lumped capacitance method showed similar results regardless of the thickness of polycarbonate model. The method was also applied for the heat transfer coefficient measurements of a fin and tube heat exchanger. The quantitative heat transfer coefficients of the plate fin were successfully obtained. As the frontal velocity increased, the heat transfer coefficients were increased, but the color-band shape showed similar patterns regardless of frontal velocity.