Fujifilm FinePix F50fd

Reviewed October 2007

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 light produced by the flash of the F50fd is even — there is no light falloff in the corners of the image — and is sufficient so that the lowest sensitivity of 100 ISO, less prone to noise, can be used.

While overall the colours in the image are good, it is possible to detect the influence of the mixed artificial lighting on the auto white balance.

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.

Zoomed in, the lens captures the equivalent of a 108 mm and the maximum aperture is f5.1, which yields an insufficient amount of light to produce an acceptably bright image at 100 ISO. Setting the sensitivity to Auto (400) ISO, the camera increases sensitivity to the maximum (400 ISO) and yields a well exposed image.

The remarks made for the wide angle image can be applied to this one.

With the F50fd, better macros can be obtained if the Aperture Priority mode is used as it gives control over the depth of field. Using a small aperture (f8) makes it possible to maximize the depth of field as long as plenty of light is provided to light the subject.

Set to Macro focus, the F50fd is able to focus on a subject that is from 5 to 80 cm (2 in. to 2.6 ft.) from the front element of the lens at the wide angle end, and from 30 to 80 cm (1 and 2.6 ft.) when the zoom is at the telephoto end.

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 256 segment light metering pattern of the FinePix F50fd is excellent, as we have often noted on other Fujifilm compacts. The exposures the camera yields with outdoor shots captured under good light is perfectly balanced, and shows no trace of over or under exposure, even when there are strong contrasts in the scene. With exposures such as that, there is no visible chromatic aberration. Barrel distortion is, as well, not noticeable.

On the other hand, the image sharpness is slightly soft throughout the frame and increasingly so in the corners of the frame, a phenomenon that is most noticeable when the widest aperture was used to capture the image.

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 maximum telephoto setting of the zoom, sharpness increases noticeably. There is no pincushion distortion, nor is there a chromatic aberration. The exposure is excellent, and the image is detail-rich, revealing a lot of detail both outside the building and even inside the building, behind the reflective blue-green tinted glass doors.

NIGHT PHOTO

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

With the Long Exposure option in the Setup menu active, the F50fd is capable of capturing exposures as long as 8 seconds when the camera is set to the Night mode. Using the 100 ISO sensitivity level to keep noise to the absolute minimum, an 8-second exposure still requires a relatively well-lit subject to yield an interesting image. Moreover, if the zoom is used, the brightness of the subject becomes even more critical as the aperture available to the camera becomes smaller.

Zooming in slightly past the widest angle allows the camera to record a sharper image, even at the widest aperture, which in this case is f3.2. As with other Fujifilm compact cameras that are equipped with a Super CCD, the FinePix F30 does not use a dark frame noise reduction system. Instead, once the image is captured, it is saved to the memory.

Inspecting the image captured at 100 ISO at 100% scale on a monitor, reveals that noise is quite low and mostly visible in the darker areas of the frame. The level of detail, on the other hand, is excellent.