Review: Fuji FinePix F50 SE is a sweet li'l point 'n' shoot
I ran into Scott Beale of Laughing Squid during last week's Federated Media Conversational Marketing Summit, and noticed he wasn't lugging around the ginormous SLR camera he's usually spotted with at tech events. Instead, he was carrying a small Fuji device. He shot some fun snaps with it during the conference. Here's a snip from his review:
I’m always on the hunt for the ultimate, point-and-shoot compact camera that I can carry around in my pocket when I don’t want to bring out the big Canon 5D. I’ve owned several Canon PowerShots going all the way back to the S400 and I’ve even had a Panasonic Lumix. All have been fine cameras, but I’ve had my eye on the Fuji FinePix series for a while, especially after hearing how well they do in low light. Well I may have just found my perfect compact camera, the new Fuji FinePix F50 SE.Link, includes more sample photos shot with this device, too.(...) The Fuji FinePix F50 SE is a 12MP Super CCD camera that is able to go up to 3200 ISO at 6MP and 6400 ISO at 3MP (however always try to stay under 400 ISO), as well as auto ISO which you can limit to 400, 800 and 1600. It has a dual image stabilization system (both mechanical and digital) and a face detection system that even works at an angle (up to 10 faces). It has a full manual mode, aperture priority mode, an natural mode for optimal non-flash shooting and even a natural + flash mode that shoots two photos at once, with and without a flash.
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"(However, always try and stay under 400 ISO)".
And the point of 6400 ISO is?
(Sorry to be a bit negative, but while we're at it, here's point two: why do I have to hit the Back button a gazillion times to get back to BoingBoing proper after commenting?).
There, enough with the negativity - may I take this opportunity to once again state without fear of repudiation that your two BB blogs are the best entertainment on the planet.
I just bought its predecessor, F31fd, instead of waiting for the F50. The main reasons were the F50's lower battery time (60% lower!!!) and noisier images (12MP is too much for a compact; the image quality suffers, and scaling the images down doesn't help).
Now that they aren't locked into XD card format anymore I might give one a try.
That one thing was really my main issue with them.
I never liked XD.
Patrick, I'm gonna hazard a guess that he means the 6400 iso is nice when you need it, ie to get a usable shot in low light, but introduces more noise than typically acceptable.
Ie, you're trying to take a photo of a dark church service .. the flash would be very rude. Use 6400 iso. (Well, or whatever ISO works best.) But if you're trying to take a photo of your cat in the living room, use 400 or less and the flash.
Patrick Dodds (2), I believe it's because the entries and comments are actually run off separate databases, the better to balance demand on the overall system. I also find it inconvenient, but I've repeatedly been assured it's for the greater good.
It's a real disappointment that they opted to cram in the 12 megapixels. The previous models, the F20, F30, and F31fd (which all share the same basic internals) are already legendary as the best low-light point and shoot digital cameras ever. (In fact, they're in a class by themselves -- there's seriously no competition that comes close.) Unfortunately, the F50 gives that up. It's still good, but no longer great.
The "wisdom" is that they have no choice but to chase the higher megapixel numbers or else fail in the market, and maybe that's true, but it's a shame.
Just got my hands on the F50, after being a HUGE fan of the F10, F30, and F31fd before it. Having owned many digital compacts, I feel pretty confident saying that the F50 is a MAJOR dissapointment from Fuji. The whole point of the SuperCCD was it's close-to-SLR performance in low light, and at High ISOs. The tradeoff because of the configuration of the photo centers was that you were never going to get marketing numbers much more than 6.2 megapixels. The Fs used to be able to post useable shots at up to 1600 ISO, but the new camera is a mess. Indoors in a well-lit photo lab I'm seeing noise on absolutely everything. It's grain, rather than Panasonics' smearing, but it's still unacceptable at virtually all ISO levels, and it's not a matter of pixel-peeping, as this is clearly visible on the 2.5" screen. The arguement that you should just run the images through Noise Ninja or similar is absurd for the typical compact user. The body is now primarily plastic instead of metal, giving it a cheap feel. The redesign of the body is now too small to comfortably use. After extensive testing, I've also found Face Detection 2.0 to be no better than Fuji's original Face Detection (although, it's still arguably one of the best on the market). The auto red-eye fix is pretty cool, and it's nice to see Fuji throw on some kind of stabilzer finally. However, they don't in any way make up for the titanic loss of IQ Fuji has presented with this camera. Find a used F30 or 31 instead.