Fujifilm FinePix F10 Zoom

Opinion: excellent cam

Opinion: Lacks real M mode, Tv, and Av modes. iso1600 has severe noise reduction added resulting in very "chunky" egdes.

Opinion: Rather dissapointed.
It could be really awesome camera, but it has problems with quality of the photos (see below).
And it is extremely loud. I had the same model earlier for a week an that was much quieter.

Opinion: The output of this camera is phenomenal. It really competes with my other two tools -
the Nikon D100 and D50.

Every time I play with another point and shoot, I always want to see output like my F10.

Battery life is amazing taking months of pictures, if you don't use the flash or the assist
lamp.

Opinion: Bought this camera as a second carry-around pockateble camera to my Nikon D50. The main reason I went for the F10 was it's brilliant results at high ISOs and low noise. It does the best job I've ever seen in a point&shoot. Other aspects of this little digicam that should be mentioned are, among others, the amazing autonomy of the proprietary Li-Ion rechargeable battery. I have had the camera for almost a month now and, allthough I haven't used it extensively, I have not had to recharge the battery ant it still shows 2/3 battery full. It shoots nice movies at a very good quality and it is very simple to use. Also, the metal body of the camera feels good in one's hands.

Opinion: I have got the F10 because of its great ISO capabilities and because I needed a fast compact camera with a good movie mode.
The high ISO capability is definitely better than that of the competition, the camera IS fast and the movie mode is quite good. So the camera really delivers in the areas that were most important to me.

I knew beforehand about the negative aspects of this camera (and these are largely the same for F11 and F30):

- no optical viewfinder (useful in very bright sunlight)
- no shutter or aperture priority modes (the F11 and F30 have those, as far as I know)
- no change of sharpness, saturation, contrast
- no live histogram
- proprietary lithium batteries and not universal AA batteries, which I favor
- xD cards, which only Oly and Fuji use and which cost about twice as much as comparable SD cards
- no RAW capture
- slow lens with f/5 at telephoto
- lots of Chromatic Aberrations

There are quite a few cameras under 300,- USD out there that can do most of those things that I am missing. The Canon A700 and A540 can do everything I am missing apart from RAW capture.

I knew all of this and still got the F10, because the Canon A540/A700 are not as nicely built, are bigger, and, above all, don't have the ability to produce clean photos at ISO 400 and higher. Having had a DSLR for a year I simply felt that I could not put up with being restricted to using only ISO 100 or ISO 200. And I hate photos taken with the built-in flash.

So in a way I got what I wanted, I know it would be a tradeoff.

But still I find it slightly disappointing that Fuji could not have produced a camera with this sensor and the controls of the Canon Powershots. My 4 year old Oly C-4000 has live histogram, full manual controls etc. The E900 by Fuji has all the controls, too, but a high ISO performance that is not quite as good, and it cost a lot more when I got the F10.

Concerning the high ISO - it really is nice and has made it possible for me to take shots at ISO 800. BUT on the negative side, it has to be said that fine detail is really lost from ISO 200 onwards and the photos look definitely very post-processed, as you cannot turn off the noise reduction in the camera (as I can on my Oly C-4000).
So, while the high ISO ability is nice and the photos up to ISO 800 really do not look noisy (only ISO 1600 does), the tradeoff is this very artificial, water-colour look that comes from extreme noise-reduction. I once took some photos in a park and had the camera still on ISO 400 and afterwards I was wondering why the photos had turned out so without any clearly defined details in grass and leaves.

Well, now I know that I have to keep the camera on ISO 80 or ISO 100 for outdoor shots and may only use higher ISOs for indoor shots or for outdoor shots where there are not so many fine details involved.

While I really value the usefulness of high ISO, the tradeoff in image quality because of heavy-handed noise reduction is quite high. Sometimes I wish I could have a more natural looking ISO 400 photo, even with a bit of image noise. The lens CAN really produce very sharp photos (if you have chosen a low ISO setting), but its proneness for CA is really as extreme as it gets and can be quite annoying, especially as the lack of a histogram means that you cannot check beforehand if you have blown highlights (which tend to provoke CA in many cases).

So - altogether I feel that although the F10 can produce stunning photos, I would have preferred a slightly more feature-rich camera to be able to take such photos on a more regular basis.

I am not completely happy with this camera, but considering that I only paid around 200,- € (240,- USD) for it the camera is still quite nice.

Frank

Opinion: Disappointed

Purple fringing
Random exposure
Can't use exposure compensation with program scene
Bad white balance in bright light
Overexposure in bright light
Lack of hyperfocal

My S500 - Yes Casio !! - takes better pictures in bright light.
Ok, the F10 is amazing in low light, but in bright light many many cameras are better.

Opinion: I have used a lot of cameras from a variety of producers: Nikon, Minolta, Canon etc. The only good point with the F10 is it's high iso sensitivity. Whereas it might sound a great plus, images are still quite grainy, inspite what people say. The ovreprocessing in-camera is obvious and that gives as a result colourfull images, but quite soft and lacking the clarity or crystal-clear aspect of some other compact cameras.
However, when it comes to the price, that is quite high for its capabilities: no manual control, grainy high-iso images (even if generally usable), focus somehow random etc.

Opinion: I previously owned a FujiA210 as my first point and shoot digital camera. This camera is so much superior, especially the recovery time. Everything is so much faster. I love the bigger lcd. I am not a sophisticated camera person, so many of the detail settings etc. I don't worry about. What I like about it is it takes excellent pictures, easy to operate, and the battery life is amazing! Overall good value.