By Edvarcl Heng, CNET Asia
25/10/2007
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39005881,40949739p,00.htm

Once darkness falls, it's often a lost cause for compact camera users. The throw distance of your itsy-bitsy cam's flash is too short and the aperture is too small. Even the world's greatest image stabilizer system isn't a help if your max exposure time is a near-pittance.

But by brandishing a heightened light sensitivity, Fujifilm thinks it has that covered. At ISO 6,400, the FinePix F50fd's is the Japanese firm's beacon against the shadow of blurred night-time shots.

Design

But does it look good while brightening up your night shots? In a sense--no. Despite the new curves, which Fujifilm calls the Aero (Vista?) design language, the F50fd is still decidedly clunky (155g).

     

Click to see larger image: Dual IS menu; menu captions; 100 thumbnails

Yet the layout of the controls made us a little more forgiving. Help captions are plentiful. Turn the jog dial, and onscreen instructions will tell you what you are looking at.

Buttons are well-spaced-out and the user menu's learning curve is less taxing on the new user. During shooting, pressing the menu button once will conjure up a contextual menu that's relevant to the current camera mode. To enter the main menu, you will need to scroll down to the setup tab.

There's also an italicized "F" button that serves as a shortcut menu for ISO, megapixel quality and color mode. It's convenient, but there isn't a provision for customization.

The Mode wheel requires more thumb muscle than we expected since it's stiff, but some will like it for its precision. There're also two custom keys for image stabilization and face detection, but usually users don't meddle with these, so the pair may be better off serving other features.

Features

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.

Performance

In our performance tests, the FinePix F50fd took 2.4 seconds to start up and capture its first JPEG. Subsequent JPEGs took 2.14 seconds between shots with the flash turned off and 2.4 seconds with the flash turned on. That's right on par with the current crop of 12-megapixel shooters.

     

Click to see larger image: Fair dynamic range.

The F50fd's shutter lag measured an impressive 0.5 second in our high-contrast test and 0.9 second in our low-contrast test which mimic bright and dim shooting conditions, respectively. In our continuous shooting test, the F50fd averaged three frames per second.

Speed was also not the F50fd's forte. The camera had a tendency to be sluggish, taking time to recharge and clear its buffer.

Image Quality

With our color chart, the F50fd holds down the noise well… up to ISO 400. That's when image noise and artifacts start to creep in. At ISO 1,600, which is the final ISO setting at which the F50fd supports 12-megapixel capture, white noise is unbearable. Ramp it up to ISO 3,200 and 6,400, and things get extremely fuzzy.

     

Click to see larger image: ISO 400; 1,600; 6,400.

In real-life night-time shots, we find the noise to be a fair compromise if you prefer not to use the flash in nocturnal photography. Close-up shots of static objects are well-illuminated, but there are likely few people who would sit still long enough to wait out the longish ¼ seconds shutter.

     

Getting brighter: From ISO 100 to 800 and 6,400.

We also find little evidence of purple fringing in night shots, but quite a fair bit in the day.

The automatic white balance handles colors well and images have a decent dynamic range. However, there are some bright scenarios when the camera overexposures. The manual exposure compensation is called for here.