Fujifilm FinePix A350

Reviewed September 2005

Test Photos

STILL LIFE PHOTO

This subject is photographed in a room that has a mix of fluorescent and incandescent light, but which is not brightly lit. The camera's flash is used to add fill light. The backdrop is 1.95 m (6.5 ft) from the camera.

Left to its defaults, the FinePix A350 captured a useable but slightly dark image of this subject. Increasing the exposure compensation to +0.3 EV produced a slightly brighter image, but not one that was sufficiently bright. At +0.6 EV the resulting image was, in comparison to the one captured at +0.9EV, better exposed for colour.

With all flash photos captured at the wide angle end of the zoom, the camera automatically increased the sensitivity to 100 ISO, boosting the effectiveness of the flash up from its default 64 ISO value.

ZOOM PHOTO

Now we zoom in on a specific area. The intent is to test the sharpness of the image at the zoom's maximum setting. The camera remains at the same distance as with the preceding photo.

At the full telephoto setting of the zoom, the maximum starting aperture available to the camera becomes f4.7, and the A350 produces a slightly darker image, even with exposure compensation, and an automatic increase in the sensitivity to 128 ISO.

Here again the compression seemingly lessens the image sharpness slightly. But, although the sensitivity gets a boost to increase the effectiveness of the flash, the corresponding increase in noise remains discreet.

In macro mode, the FinePix A350 has a minimum focusing distance of 6 cm to 80 cm (2.4 to 31.2 inches) from the subject. When the Macro mode is started, the camera automatically moves the lens to the wide angle end and locks it there. The field of view that the A350 captures then is approximately 7 cm (2.73 inches) when measured horizontally from one edge of the frame to the other.

A bit of barrel distortion can be observed in the images, but it is not so pronounced as to be a serious issue.

BUILDING PHOTO

This image is our outdoor test. The architecture of the building, in particular the angled girders, immediately show the presence of jaggies. The shadowed entrance can also often reveal the quality of the exposure.

On a bright and sunny day, and using the Auto white balance, the FinePix A350 produced images that had noticeable reddish and purplish tints. Switching the white balance to Sun, however, improved the colour balance and allowed the camera to produce very acceptable images, although with slightly over-saturated blues.

The compression, however, is relatively strong with this subject, and the image looses a bit of sharpness.

ZOOM PHOTO

Zooming in on the entrance of the building, the shadowed entrance takes on a greater importance for the metering and can cause an overexposure of sections that are directly lit.

At the full magnification of the zoom, the FinePix's photos revealed no distortion whatsoever, nor any severe chromatic aberration.

The metering is quite accurate and the shadow areas show a fair level of detail while the directly lit zones are not overexposed. Nevertheless, when left set to Auto white balance, this image also showed a noticeable reddish tint, and better images resulted when the "Sun" setting was used.

NIGHT PHOTO

As this camera is capable of a long exposure, a photo taken at night is included.

One of the Fujifilm FinePix A350's scene modes, the Night Mode, allows a maximum exposure time of 2 seconds.

Of course, as with all scene modes, the Night mode does not offer the user any control over the sensitivity of the camera, and with a subject such as the one presented here, a 2-second exposure using the A350's lowest CCD sensitivity of 64 ISO would result in a fairly dark exposure. The camera therefore automatically boosts the sensitivity to 200 ISO.

Similarly, the Night Scene mode does not offer any user control over the white balance, and the use of auto white balance yields an image that is strongly influenced by the incandescent lighting, and by the sodium vapour urban lighting.

The FinePix A350 does not appear to use any type of noise reduction as the image is shown on the monitor immediately after capture, without the usual delay caused by a dark frame noise reduction system.