F70EXR bad purple fringing problem?

In a review, I read that the F70EXR would have "a bad purple/colour fringing problem that eventually drives you crazy".

Since I'm considering this camera, my question to F70EXR users is: Can you confirm this, or not? Any samples available?

Look around, there are lots of F70-images around.

And yes, PF is quite high on the F70 especially at wideangle and it happens also on contrasty edges which aren´t necessary overexposed.

There is a price you have to pay for a compact 10x-zoom.

The F70 I received this past Friday is being exchanged due to the lens. The entire top of the image area in 4:3 is soft and the top corners are unacceptably blurry\out of focus until at least 50mm. Clearly a QC issue with lens installation which is unfortunate because everything else said and documented in the FTF is true IMO about the F70 - the higher iso performance, the DR, et cetera. A friend noticed last night that the lens barrels do not set evenly on the cam with the top side ever so slightly lower into the camera than the botton. I'm wondering if this causes the drastic focus difference at the top of the image and a greater chance of PF at the top. I like the cam, I compared identical shots from my F30 yesterday and do see that I'll enjoy the IQ more, but the lens on the one I have is in need of a couple adjustments.

Greg

one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch of girls...

RIP Michael Jackson
--

Oddly enough, I haven't even tried any other aspect ratio but 3:2, that is how I have shot for years and see no reason to change. I should try it but am afraid I will see bad edge/corner sharpness and then be angry about a feature I will never use. Regardless, I have been looking at the edges and see nothing wrong so far in 3:2 mode. All in EXR DR and macro mode if I recall correctly.





Had my wife use her white jacket as a reflector here to throw a little more light from behind the flower, I am tempted now to buy her a gold and a silver jacket as well.



Ted

gtphoto said:

The F70 I received this past Friday is being exchanged due to the lens. The entire top of the image area in 4:3 is soft and the top corners are unacceptably blurry\out of focus until at least 50mm. Clearly a QC issue with lens installation which is unfortunate because everything else said and documented in the FTF is true IMO about the F70 - the higher iso performance, the DR, et cetera. A friend noticed last night that the lens barrels do not set evenly on the cam with the top side ever so slightly lower into the camera than the botton. I'm wondering if this causes the drastic focus difference at the top of the image and a greater chance of PF at the top. I like the cam, I compared identical shots from my F30 yesterday and do see that I'll enjoy the IQ more, but the lens on the one I have is in need of a couple adjustments.

Greg

Click to expand...

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http://photobucket.com/albums/y260/tdkd13/

I had written about my initial disappointment with purple fringing in another thread ( http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1012&message=33092667 ) that was based on a single photo - one of my first F70 shots - with really bad PF whereas I had not seen any significant PF in any of my almost 1,500 F200 shots.

After about 400 snaps with the F70, I found that I only encountered that same amount of PF once more. That day was the last day that I carried both cameras, taking some pics with both for comparison. I was again disappointed with the F70 because of this and was wondering if I was crazy for keeping it. But, when I checked the F200 a few days later, I found that the PF was equally unacceptable for that shot (see below). It was a very difficult scene for a pocket cam to capture correctly - or I just didn't know how to do it correctly and got bad results with both cameras.

But, in normal day-do-day shooting, I'm finding that PF is not a problem for the typical photos I take. Although, I do worry about it now in hi-contrast scenes whereas I had never worried about it with the F200.

Below are 3 photos... The first two are the scene that I described above with both cameras exhibiting unacceptable PF in the upper right corners. The 3rd is a F70 snap from today. I was concerned while composing this one (taken specifically to submit to a local news blog) because the conditions were similar to the conditions I encountered when I got the bad PF the very first time. Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any here.

All were PPd to adjust levels, contrast & sharpening. The first two had some quick perspective adjustments as wel (still didn't get it quite right in one). The 3rd one had some burning around the sky in the upper right corner and some dodging on the foreground buildings - nothing to fix PF.

Brooklyn Heights House (F200EXR) f/3.3 1/90 ISO 200 75mm



Brooklyn Heights House (F70EXR) f/3.3 1/110 ISO 200 59mm



Police Lineup (F70EXR) f/5.2 1/85 ISO 100 164mm



--
Joel
http://www.joelsphotoblog.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelrnyc

Ted, excellent macro shots - I'll never get bored with images of flowers. There's no doubt the camera can perform. My taste is the 4:3 mode and wider angles which is where the problem is showing itself. I need the F70 for the things my F30 and 31 do not have - one being wider than 36mm. I'll definately exchange the one I have in hopes of getting another not in the same batch and enjoy the hell out of it.

For those interested, here is the right half of an image shot in P mode, ISO100, DR 400, f4.3@140 just to show the corner sharpness (on my particular F70) in 4:3 mode. Follow the tree on the right from bottom to top and check the sharpness on the way up - bottom corner not too bad at, top corner,... well...



Greg

Thank you for these example pictures. I'd say the F200EXR is still clearly the better one of the two upper pictures, if one for example considers the trees in the upper right corner.

But if that happens only rarely, given the features and compactness together with low price, the F70EXR might still be something to consider.

Even without the purple fringing issue I still prefer the picture of the F200EXR. The image from F70EXR doesn't seem as sharp as the F200EXR. The exposure of the F70EXR also needed to be dropped a bit.

Ted,
Great pictures. These shots are perfect.

If any of my F70 flower shots come out even 1/2 as good as these I'll be very happy.

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All the best,
Jim

Photographers take pictures, not cameras.

Have you tried experimenting to attempt to quantify the problem. I guess what I am saying is if you were to shoot something that you were completely perpendicular to would you see the same extent of this blurring? The tree along the right side is at the extreme front of the focus field, not saying that is the cause but it seems an example in which that level of fuzziness is shown in an image in which that part of the frame was in the same plane of focus as the area of the frame the camera focussed on would be more telling.

The old stand in front of a brick wall and shoot it, or a wood fence, something with detail. I'm sure you could elicit an exchange easily if armed with an image with that level of out of focus all in the same plane as the focus point.

Just curious, what do people do with 4:3 shots anyways? 4"x3", 8"x6" or 9"x12" are not very common print sizes where I live. And with displays all going wider it seems an odd size.
Take care and good luck getting that unit returned, Ted

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http://photobucket.com/albums/y260/tdkd13/

James, thank you, I really had to work at the angles to try and get nicer backgrounds with the larger than I am used to DOF. In macro mode its not too difficult as the camera is like 4-5 CM from the flower, but I did end up with many that have somewhat distracting backgrounds. Luckily, there are always some flowers that you can angle in on and have nothing close behind the flower.

It's a fun little camera. Iam going on a trip to Minneapolis and Chicago for work and hopefully I can talk my wife into letting me take this camera. Unless I can finagle a day or so off to do some fall color drives I dont see a need to carry a heavier kit.
Take care, Ted

James Cafferty said:

Ted,
Great pictures. These shots are perfect.

If any of my F70 flower shots come out even 1/2 as good as these I'll be very happy.

--
All the best,
Jim

Photographers take pictures, not cameras.

Click to expand...

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http://photobucket.com/albums/y260/tdkd13/

PolarHki said:

In a review, I read that the F70EXR would have "a bad purple/colour fringing problem that eventually drives you crazy".

Since I'm considering this camera, my question to F70EXR users is: Can you confirm this, or not? Any samples available?

Click to expand...

Yes, the purple fringing problem would eventually drive that reviewer crazy.

Me, I don't find it much worse than what I had with the F11. It seems to hit less often. But when it hits ... it's pretty impressive ...

--
http://letkeman.net/Photos
http://kimletkeman.blogspot.com

SHood said:

Even without the purple fringing issue I still prefer the picture of the F200EXR. The image from F70EXR doesn't seem as sharp as the F200EXR.

Click to expand...

Got some head to head examples? Or is that just conjecture.

SHood said:

The exposure of the F70EXR also needed to be dropped a bit.

Click to expand...

Say it as often as you want ... the photographer makes the exposure, not the camera.

--
http://letkeman.net/Photos
http://kimletkeman.blogspot.com

According to the following Aussy review the F200EXR give more CA than the F70EXR? strange eh.

http://www.photoreview.com.au/Fujifilm/reviews/slimline/fujifilm-finepix-f70exr.aspx

Generally its only seen if you crop i.e. tree branches in a strong lighted sky background.

You can of course spend the same money on something like the sony T90-but the reviews are pretty basic and it certainly does not shine in any real capacity like the F70EXR. If you dont want PF then get the Panasonic FZ7 but to be honest I have both and the auto scene recognition is far better in the Fujifilm.

http://www.digicamreview.com/fujifilm_finepix_f70exr_review.htm

Highly Reccomended !!

Kim Letkeman said:

Me, I don't find it much worse than what I had with the F11.

Click to expand...

The PF on the F11 occoured almost only on overexposed edges and covered far less pixels than on the F70.

I think PF on the F11 is much closer to the F100/200 than to the F70.

SHood said:

The exposure of the F70EXR also needed to be dropped a bit.

Click to expand...

Forgot to mention that the exposure bias was dialed down to -1/3EV on both of the F70 shots posted above (not the F200) above

BTW, I saved these photos with full exif embedded, hosted at Smugmug - but, for some reason when I right-click and look at the exif from my Firefox plug-in, I'm not seeing any data. So, I'm thinking this is either a Smugmug issue or I don't have something set right in my Smugmug gallery. Sorry 'bout that.

--
Joel
http://www.joelsphotoblog.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelrnyc

ok, I figured out why the exif info wasn't available in the posted photos. These should work now... needed to post links to the original sizes uploaded. Apparently Smugmug strips out the exif on all resized photos.

Brooklyn Heights House (F200EXR)
f/3.3 1/90 ISO 200 75mm



Brooklyn Heights House (F70EXR)
f/3.3 1/110 ISO 200 59mm



Police Lineup (F70EXR)
f/5.2 1/85 ISO 100 164mm



--
Joel
http://www.joelsphotoblog.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelrnyc

nycfonephreak said:

. . .

BTW, I saved these photos with full exif embedded, hosted at Smugmug - but, for some reason when I right-click and look at the exif from my Firefox plug-in, I'm not seeing any data. So, I'm thinking this is either a Smugmug issue or I don't have something set right in my Smugmug gallery. Sorry 'bout that.

Click to expand...

I believe that Smugmug strips the EXIF data from all of the resized photos that it generates, so links to the O(riginal) image will show the EXIF data, not the others. I copied the image location of your first photo :

nycfonephreak said:

http://joelraskin.smugmug.com/photos/671464663_RnALx-L.jpg

Click to expand...

and changed the trailing "-L" (large size) to "-O" like so :

nycfonephreak said:

http://joelraskin.smugmug.com/photos/671464663_RnALx-O.jpg

Click to expand...

and used that URL instead, and OPanda's IEXIF2 Firefox plugin showed the EXIF data. It does display larger though, as shown below. It would be nice if Smugmug provided an option to include EXIF data for the resized photos.