Fujifilm announces Wi-Fi-enabled Finepix S8400W 44x superzoom

I wouldn't mind seeing someone release a "big zoom" based around the S110/G15 sensor size. The lens wouldn't be that much bigger, especially if you limited it to something reasonable like you said. The G15 itself doesn't owe too much of it's volume to the lens. You could slap on some more zoom range, it's 28-140 f1.8-2.8 already.

Fuji might knock one out of the park making a marginally larger superzoom out of the X20, sacrificing some size and some aperture for say 400mm. Cropping it down (say a 2.64x "digital zoom" in compact parlance), it'd still be pretty close to equivalent at 1056mm. (Would need f3.5 at 400mm to match exactly)

It's mostly targeting ignorant P&S shooters. The 44x zoom, 1000mm equivalent, etc. -- all those buzzwords that resonate in uneducated shooters, which don't understand that sensor was simply reduced to a miniscule piece of silicon to get those numbers and as a result the image quality went down the tubes.

at $349 what do you expect - any actual "quality" is a bonus with all the features. No one paying $349 is thinking about $700 camera's so it works for that price point. I would love to have a 4/3 CCD with all these features, but I would expect $600, a bigger size and also better display and viewfinder. This looks great for what it is - and much more than most will even realize.

It's a lens only metric comparing the total light of a 1056mm f40 FF lens compared to a 1056mm equivalent f6.5 compact sensor lens. To get the equivalent light gathering, you multiply the aperture by the crop factor (similar to multiplying the len's focal length by the crop factor). f6.5 times 5.6x crop is f36.4. A little mean calling it f40, but he's not that far off either.

I also like to look at it as a crop on FF camera. The 5D comes with a 24-105mm f4 lens, it's equivalent reach at this level of light gathering as a crop is 956mm. So this camera at 1056mm is ever so slightly better than using a kit FF lens and cropping it down. This is another way of saying it's not particularly useful or impressive as a TELE ONLY lens, even if you only cared about 1056mm equivalent and anything outside of that frame was useless. Though to be fair the 24-105mm lens costs a comparable amount to this camera by itself.

Q: "how do you figure f40?"
A: that's simple, the sensor is about 1/6 crop of FF, so the equivalent f-stop is 1/(6.5*6), i.e. 1/39. If I put a 4x teleconverter on a slow 250mm f/5.6 FF lens I will get 1000mm f/22, and it still will be almost 4x faster than that lens.

Okay, Petka, of course you know I was a-joking, huh? Seriously though.... SOME AMATEURS who are extremely deep-pocketed musty be buying some of those pricey-pricey medium format jobs, still no?

Yes, China is one place where a number of people have enough money to buy the "best", no matter if it really serves any other real purpose for them. I also admit owning some gear which is "best" and gets quite little use actually. MF digital cameras are not among those, though.

Oh, you musician types(CRH) get to play with all toys before the rest of us :( Maybe there is something to staying out of underground malls :D

@ Cy: Agree, simply amazing that Fujinon is actually making today $90,000 cine-style lenses and $200,000+ video lenses. I guess they can also make $49.95 lenses.

They have in fact gone backwards, I used to own a Canon Pro1, what is now a 9 year old camera & its EVF & back screen were both 230K+ resolution .. over 30,000 more! .. Worse still, the Minolta A2, had a 900K+ EVF - NINE YEARS ago!, and we're only seeing these kind of displays in the last couple of years. BOTH cameras also had top panel quick ref LCDs, something that you only find on mid-range & above DSLRs now. Apart from the pixel count & zoom race, other features that used to be there are being removed and DUMBED DOWN!. Hell they are even removing EVFs on P&S cams now, thus forcing you to wave your cam around in front of your face like a soppy iphone!

Most videocameras used by broadcasters use 1080 60i, although some broadcasters issue in 720 60p. You don't get 1080 60p anyplace but consumer cameras. Nikon added 1080 60i to the D5200, whereas the D5100 had only 30p. My 2007 display is 1080 60i, and most Blu-ray is either 1080 60i, 720 60p, or 1080 24p. The BBC will broadcast anything sufficiently spectacular, waiving any "standards" that prescribe one format or another, and not broadcast dull stuff, no matter what the format. Of course, most stuff is pretty dull, but if a Fuji owner happens to zoom in on something naughty, who knows?

Hey, on the other hand, it is FASTER than if the Fujinon lens mounted on the Finepix S8400W would have been an F5.6-to F22 lens, right?

Yes, and also no manual zoom and a slightly slower lens.

And how it justifies the whole different product with its own development, tooling, marketing etc etc etc?

Although I agree that 60p would be much better, like what some of the Sonys deliver, amongst others. But if 60i is the best that's possible, then it at least does provide a temporal resolution of 60 fps. When playing back through any flat panel tv, that tv has a built in bob-deinterlacer that converts it to 60p. You'd experience fluid motions. Not perfect, because the fancy de-interlacing process lost details especially for vertical motions, but it *is* smooth and quite sharp.
To avoid people from getting frustrated dealing with 60i on computers though, I hope it offers 30p as well.

All recent computers will play 60i HD video. Windows 7 WMP does. What the display does with the interlacing should not be noticed.

60p is pretty much horrendous for my eyes -- is basically like if the cast and crew of an ultra-reality soap opera production went to see a screening of the high frame rate "The Hobbit." But 24p, 25p, 30p, 50i, and 60i are fine, just fine.

lol that's gold! :)

No toy, no fun. All cameras are either toys or (unfortunately) instruments of starvation and poverty. A "serious" zoom would probably cost $50k, need to be carried by truck, and take pictures people would expect to get for free.

Exactly. They think a 4/3rds sensor can't be an ultra zoomer, and today’s already done 4/3rds sensors can crop more out, than crappy sensors can do, with gazillion X-factor zoom. Meaning more cleanly, in real world lighting.

Make the 4/3 sensor, super zoom! Otherwise, it will always take back seat.

The Fuji X-S1 zoom camera DOES have a 2/3" sensor.

With a 1-inch diagonal digital imager, the "sweet spot" for a zoom lens would be one with an 8x to 10x zooming range, around F2.8 to F4.0. Well, they could probably do it with a 12x optical zoom and make that into a 17x with an intelligent zoom extension, but that would be about it.

I would line up to get a pair of those -- won't really happen, of course.

The Nikon 1-series V2 and the new 10x zoom lens for it is a prime example. Unfortunately, since the lens has all sorts of gadget inside it (servo zoom, stabilizer, AF, and so on), the thing is quite heavy and dark.

The existing tamron 24-270 or sigma 18-250 for APS-C cameras will give a reach of 750-800mm in 1" sensors. And these are still very compact and made for large APS-C sensors. I'm sure its possible to make smaller versions for 1" sensors and those can still give 30-35x zoom. The manufacturers do not do this to make higher margins selling cheap sensors and the average consumers do not know much about sensor size and it's impact on IQ.