Fujifilm FinePix E900

Reviewed January 2006

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.

The wide angle of the E900's zoom captures a field of view that is the 35 mm equivalent of 32 mm lens. The image it produces is well-lit by the flash, and shows no light falloff in the corners.

This image is captured using the JPEG format and the overall sharpness of the image is slightly less than what can be obtained using the RAW format.

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.

This zoom photo on the other hand is captured using the RAW format, which yields a greater level of detail. This can be seen in the image shown below which is taken at 100% scale from the 9 megapixel original.

The slightly grainy appearance of the image, caused by noise, can also be noticed, although it is captured at the lowest sensitivity setting of 80 ISO.

MACRO PHOTO

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.

The building is photographed at noon on a partly sunny winter day. Nevertheless, the light is quite harsh, and helps reveal a chromatic aberration: a turquoise line below the beams. The chromatic aberration is most pronounced at the brightest aperture (f2.8) which is what the Program mode prefers. However, closing down the diaphragm of the camera to around f6 tends to eliminate the aberration, even at the widest angle.

A bit of colour noise can be seen as well, appearing as grain in areas with the same colour.

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.

The RAW format avoids the lossy compression of JPEG, and therefore yields the best image quality that the camera can produce.

As observed before, the E900 produces an image that shows some noise, even at 80 ISO. Still, the exposure is quite good, and details are captured in both the shadows and the areas that are directly lit. Moreover, the chromatic aberration that can be seen in the wide angle shot is absent with the telephoto shot.

NIGHT PHOTO

Since this camera is capable of long exposures, a photo taken at night is included here.

The Manual mode of the E900 has a shutter speed range of 1/2000 second down to 15 seconds, and with a 15 second maximum exposure, it is well suited to capturing night photographs.

The image presented here was saved in RAW format, and then re-saved to TIFF using Photoshop CS II RAW Plug-in. The RAW Plug in makes it possible to tweak for a wide range of parameters, and this one was optimized through minor adjustments in sharpness, colour balance, and colour noise before being saved.

Interestingly, the E900 does not appear to use the common dark-frame noise reduction system. The camera captures the image — either in JPEG or RAW — and saves it immediately.

Worth noting, while a turquoise fringe is easily detectable when the maximum aperture is used, it is eliminated if the diaphragm is closed down, as is the case here.