Fujifilm FinePix F50fd

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The street price for the F50fd has dropped from S$799 to S$599 since its launch three months back. For that price, you are buying a 12-megapixel, 3x optical zoom with a 2.7-inch LCD shooter. On paper, it's a good deal since the F50fd sports a light sensitivity of up to ISO 6,400. But there's a caveat.

Click to see larger image: Auction Mode

You can shoot at 12 megapixels all the way to ISO 1,600. After that, at ISO 3,200, the megapixel cap is 6 megapixels. Up the ISO to 6,400 and the cap lowers to 3 megapixels. The noise level steadily gets worse the higher the ISO you go.

But it can still be a bargain since it is the first time Fujifilm has swept aside its previous prejudices against image stabilization technologies. The F50fd's Dual Image Stabilizer combines its favored high ISO solution with a CCD shift stabilizer system.

Conventional wisdom intones that at higher sensitivities (ISO 1,600 at 12 megapixels on the F50fd) shutter speeds can be increased to counter handshake movements. But that's at the expense of increased image noise when the output from the CCD sensor is amplified. So it's really too much of a good thing.

Image stabilization, on the other hand, fixes the problem of camera shake with a floating mechanism (lens or the CCD) to compensate for undesired hand movement.

Now here's the real good thing about the F50fd--onboard aperture/shutter priority controls. Few compact cameras at the S$600 price range offer this flexibility. But the range of control is limited; 1-1/1,000 seconds for shutter speed and F2.8-8 for aperture.

Yet, oddly, for all its manual controls, there isn't a full manual mode. You can't tweak both aperture and shutter speeds at the same time.

While you can't be in total command of your exposure, you can with the LCD. There are 10 levels of screen brightness which is good for saving battery juice, serving as an emergency torchlight or turning up the viewing angle when you are composing over-the-crowd shots. Still, 10 is a bit of an overkill.

Speaking of overkill, we can't help but mention the image review mode. As a rule of thumb, the more images you see at a single glance, the more time you save. 10 or 25 images on a screen sound convenient. But 100 thumbnails on a 2.7-inch screen? Again, that's too much of a good thing.

The F50fd accommodates xD, SD and SDHC. Great news for consumers switching over from another brand (most compact cameras use SD) and, coming from the long-time xD Picture Card supporter, it's telling that the xD's days are numbered.

Auctioning

For something gimmicky, there's the Auction Mode. But instead of lowering the resolution capture and rebranding it as online auction-friendly like how Casio does it, Fujifilm gives value to the budding online entrepreneur by adding in frills that are actually helpful.

The built-in image-stitching template is intuitive to use--pick a template, snap the pictures, and the F50fd will put it all together in an attractive image for eBay upload. Perhaps we may be able to sell off our grubby PS/2 keyboard after all.

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