Fujifilm FinePix F30

Reviewed July 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.

For this wide angle shot the sensitivity is manually set to 100 ISO, which is the lowest sensitivity available to the F30. The resulting image is acceptable but could be a bit brighter.

Setting the sensitivity to Auto 400, the camera immediately uses 400 ISO, resulting in a much brighter image, but also in a slight increase in noise.

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.

Using the same sensitivity as was used for the wide angle shot, the F30 produced a noticeably darker image since the brightest aperture available to the lens is f5. Setting the sensitivity to Auto 400, the F30 increases to 400 ISO to enhance the effect of the small built-in flash, and yields a bright image.

While at 400 ISO some noise becomes detectable, it is comparatively little compared to what most other compact cameras would yield at that sensitivity.

The macro mode of the FinePix F30 makes it possible for the camera to focus on a subject that is between 5 and 80 cm (2 inches to 2.6 feet) from the front element of the lens at the wide angle position, and from 30 to 80 cm (1 to 2.6 ft.) at the full telephoto setting.

At the minimum focus distance and the wide angle end, the F30 captures a field of view of 6.6 cm (2.57 inches) measured horizontally in the frame; and there is very little barrel distortion.

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.

A bit of purple fringing under the "I" beams that make up the building's canopy appears to be the only negative in an otherwise flawless exposure. The metering has evaluated the scene perfectly, resulting in an image that contains details in highlights as well as shadows, and the Auto white balance has reproduced colours very faithfully, be it the blue of the sky or the blue-green tone of the building.

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.

Zoomed in, the challenge is greater for the metering since the contrast between the areas in the foreground that are lit be the sun and those that are in shadow is even greater. As can be seen, the shadows are quite deep in this shot, but overall the image the F30 captures is excellent, as even the little sign on the building's right door is legible. Worth noting as well, there is no sign of any chromatic aberration.

NIGHT PHOTO

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

The Long Exposure option of the Night Scene mode of the F30 allows a maximum exposure time of 15 seconds. However, in this mode, the selection of the aperture is up to the camera, making it impossible to obtain a very bright image as the camera automatically closes down the aperture.

Therefore, with this subject, an exposure time of 4 seconds at f3.7 is sufficient to captures a relatively bright image.

But, if getting a bright image was easy, getting one with a sharp focus proved to be more difficult as the F30 had problems focusing at infinity, and only a few of the 21 photos captured proved to be in focus.

As with other Fujifilm cameras that use a Super CCD, the FinePix F30 does not use of a noise reduction system that doubles the exposure time. Nevertheless, long exposures are remarkably noise-free at low sensitivities.