The old HS10 is limited, but gets some respect . . .

Moore's Law and Telephoto Imaging

Notes on “Superzoom” Cameras

A recent addition to the menagerie of consumer photographic equipment types in the market are so called “superzoom cameras”, sometimes also labelled less descriptively as “bridge cameras”, as they are intended to bridge the gap between consumer compacts and DSLRs. Most manufacturers offer one or more types in this class. These are compact, sealed cameras, usually with one or more internal image stabilisation mechanisms, and primarily amateur controls and operating modes. The depicted Fujifilm HS10, now obsoleted, is notable as being the first to offer a 30:1 zoom capability, in early 2010.
Superzooms have often been harshly criticised for poor optical quality compared to DSLR products. This reflects two realities. The first is that the small consumer grade imaging chips, in the 1/2.5 inch class, cannot compete with full frame or APS-C DSLRs in photosite area at similar Megapixel counts, reflecting in much noisier images. The other reality is that 10:1 out to 30:1 zoom ratios are inevitably at the expense of optical sharpness, chromatic aberration and distortion performance.
How severe are these limitations? That depends in part on how well the superzoom has been designed by the manufacturer, and configured by the end user. The Fujifilm HS10 for instance, performs poorly in fully automatic Program AE mode at full zoom. Studying images produced in this mode shows that the algorithm for exposure control does not appear to account properly for focal length setting, which results in slow exposure settings, wide open apertures and jitter induced losses of sharpness - in effect the HS10 algorithm makes much the same mistakes as an inexperienced human telephoto shooter. Setting the HS10 into shutter priority mode, with 1/400 or shorter exposures, appears to solve this problem, leaving the exposure algorithms to manipulate aperture controls - unfortunately Auto-ISO is disabled in the “pro modes” requiring manual intervention to select a good ISO choice, and manual adjustment of shutter speed. The results are considerably better in this regime.
Numerous HS10 samples at 720 mm equivalent focal length have been studied. While noise performance at 100 ISO is poor, and comparable to a Nikon D90 at 1600 ISO, sharpness is remarkably good, and surprisingly, comparable to a number of semi-professional DSLR zoom offerings at lower focal lengths.
At the same 450 mm equivalent focal length, sharpness of the Fujinon lens in the HS10 is competitive at against the semi-professional grade Nikkor 70-300 mm f/4-5.6D ED, while imaging sensor performance is not. It is interesting to note that the successor superzooms to the HS10 appear to use the same lens system, but considerably better 16 Megapixel sensors and processing.
While the author has used the HS10 mostly for documentation applications, as it is convenient, small and light (~0.65 kg), and has good macro modes, it has been used as a backup on production shoots and has produced sufficient image quality for less challenging production print publishing and web applications. While superzooms will always fall well behind contemporary DSLRs in noise performance due to the physics of imaging chip size, with good lens design they can provide highly competitive telephoto performance against cheaper DSLR lenses, providing the ground rules in lens and camera mode configuration are respected by users.