By Leonard Goh
07/04/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39005881,42595112p,00.htm

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd is the successor to the popular F50fd which garnered a cult-like following. Shutterbugs like the F-series for its high ISO sensitivity and low-noise reproduction, which give very pleasing night shots. Improving on the previous model, the Japanese firm is now offering a whole slew of features which makes this shooter a powerful compact not to be trifled with.

Design

The F100fd is a camera you either love or hate, and it's pretty much dependent on your gender. While male friends will likely swoon over its robust body, the fairer sex will not gravitate toward its the bulk and weight. At 170g (excluding battery and memory media), it is 15g heavier than the F50fd. The mass is also attributable to a slightly bigger chassis and longer zoom lens.

One of the things we noticed about the F100fd is the awkward placement of the built-in flash unit. Located near the left edge of the camera where the grip is, there were times when our fingers blocked the flash partially.

On its predecessor, a four-directional pad and dial are used to switch between different shooting modes. For the F100fd, a wheel dial replaces that. While it serves no function in shooting mode, the dimpled dial can be used to scroll through menus and images, which is fun to use. Alternatively, you can also deploy the dial as a four-way directional keypad for navigation.

The menu interface took us some time to adapt to. An F button calls up the most frequently used settings, while the main menu button, which is located in the center of the wheel dial, brings you to the shooting mode menu. It did get a little confusing at times when we needed to change a setting because we weren't sure which button to press. More often than not, we ended up in the wrong menu.

Features

While the F50fd has a conventional 35mm lens with 3x optical zoom, the 12-megapixel F100fd incorporates a 28mm wide-angle lens with 5x optical zoom. This is an upgrade that most shutterbugs will appreciate, especially for taking sceneries and group shots.

Most shooters usually have a maximum ISO of 3,200, and a rare few offer a sensitivity of 6,400. But this is often at the expense of noisy images. For the F100fd, its biggest selling point is probably the ultra-high ISO sensitivity of 12,800. This will mean that taking images in the dark without the aid of flash is possible. It is particularly handy for taking night sceneries and portraits, where the harshness of the flash sometimes spoils the mood of the shot. But do note that the resolution of the image is capped at 3 megapixels for ISO 6,400 and 12,800, so don't expect to make big prints with these images.

High-contrast pictures often show "burned" highlights or blotchy shadow details when taken with a normal shooter. The F100fd promises a 400 percent increase in dynamic range, meaning details in bright and dark regions are preserved. According to Fujifilm, this is due to the newly developed Super CCD VIII and RP (Real Photo) Processor III image processor.

The point-and-shoot also introduces Face Detection 3.0, a new version of the technology that Fujifilm claims can recognize side profiles and even upside-down faces. No doubt, this gives the Japanese firm an edge in a market saturated with cameras that tout face detection.

We aren't too sure about straining our eyes to view 100 thumbnail images on the 2.7-inch LCD display, but this is what the shooter is capable of. This proved handy when we needed to find a particular picture fast.

Its predecessor gives users additional shooting options with aperture and shutter priority, but it is missing on the F100fd. Although there is a Manual mode (which got us excited for a while), it is primarily an auto mode with manual override on certain settings like exposure compensation.

The point-and-shoot also has an infrared port built beside the power button. It is nice that Fujifilm imported this connectivity option over to its new shooter. However, each image file at full resolution is about 2MB, and we are not sure how fast the infrared can transmit. We'd have preferred Bluetooth or Wi-Fi for this function. In fact, there was a connection error when we tried to send a picture to our Sony Ericcson K800i mobile phone.

The shooter also serves up the usual offerings of 16 scene modes, dual image stabilizer (which employs CCD-shift and high ISO sensitivity) and an internal memory of 57MB. It has a dual expansion slot that accepts both SD/SDHC and xD-Picture Card flash memory cards.

Performance

We were curious to see how the new version of face detection would perform, and were surprised that it did work as stated. It was quick to recognize faces that were facing the camera, and continued to track even when they were moving. Side profiles were easily detected, too, which is one huge plus point. We pointed it at kids hanging from swings at the playground and the F100fd managed to detect their faces, although it was a little slow. But still, kudos to Fujifilm for delivering what it promised.

The camera took 2.56 seconds to start up, which is a crawl compared with other shooters like Panasonic's FX36. However, the shutter lag has been vastly improved from the F50fd (0.5 second), clocking in at 0.1 second.

We found the battery life for the F100fd pretty standard. It lasted us 200 shots before the power indicator icon started blinking.

Image Quality

We put the F100fd to the test in several high-contrast situations to see if the wide dynamic range really makes any difference. We have to say we were quite surprised to capture images that showed fine details even in the highlight and shadow regions.

The shooter produced very pleasing pictures in our tests. Images taken at ISO 100 through to ISO 800 showed little trace of noise. Colors were pleasantly vibrant and skin tones accurate. But what we really wanted to see was how images at ISO 12,800 would turn out. Thus we brought the point-and-shoot out for a spin in the city at night. We were impressed by how the image processor managed to suppress the noise, even at the highest ISO sensitivity. Sure, the images looked blotchy, but the F100fd did a good job of cleaning up the digital artifacts.

ISO 100

ISO 200

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1,600

ISO 3,200

ISO 6,400

ISO 12,800