rhagan
Member
There is little on this forum about the F550 and 600 cameras, except for Kim Letkeman's very useful comments and references to his blog about the 550. I just picked up an F600, ran some tests of its features and compared it with images I have been getting from the earlier Fujifilm JZ300. After a few years shopping and buying three Canon P&S cameras, I find find putting a lot of power in one's pocket is Fuji's special strength.
The JZ300 was a neat little 10x zoom 12 mp pocket camera I carried around a lot. The F600 is a slightly larger and heavier pocket brick, has a bewildering collection of menu possibilities, and Amazon has it new and used at very good prices. I was attractred to the possibility of 16 MP, greater expanded dynamic range, 24mm wide equiv. and a longer zoom, and the more remote possibility of usable 3200 ISO. I was also attracted to the raw option it offers. I should add that my first camera was a Speed Graphic, so you can imagine that I value portability at my age.
My conclusions in brief:
16 MP is an illusion. The L files are bigger than the M files but offer no greater resolution. Lens issue? No, the JZ300 files have as much resolution. All start to pixilate at a little over 100% viewing. Anyway, many of the F600 modes require the M size file anyway, as Mr. Letkeman has made clear. (M results in an 8 MP file.)
The lens is nice, a little gone at the corners at full wide, not bothersome at web sizes, and the full zoom is sharp, with quite good stabilization, if slow. The Auto ISO 1600 (or 3200) makes up for that, nicely if the situation calls in only 800 or so, usably if you need more but will post-process extensively. (One's tolerance for grain rises with age: I am accustomed to Plus X processed in D76.) The EXR shooting options are clever and I am still experimenting with using one of them for quick response to varying situations. But the choice they give of High Dynamic Range priority or Resolution priority are meaningless to me because of the limitations of the lens/sensor/software in the camera.
Dynamic Range choices are mostly meaningless at 200% in terms of holding highlights and shadows. 400% shows slight improvement. But the real advantage of the camera, for static scenes, is its Exposure Bracketing option. Shooting at correct exposure, 1 stop under and 1 over (the max change it offers) makes it possible to far outdo the one-shot DR method, which works by exposing half of the pixels for less than the chosen exposure. I use the program "Dynamic Photo HDR5" to process these three exposures. I had already begun using this program with the JZ300, where I had to change the exposures manually and reshoot twice. Dynamic Photo HDR5 makes aligning the three shots possible in a manual operation that is very clever. Now, with the F600, the three shots, which happen within one second, can be handheld with no or little misallingment and are easy to check and correct in the HDR work flow.
I am posting two images done with in-camera HD 400% and with AE bracketing, three shots into one by the Dynamic Photo HDR program. It was hand held, and two of the images matched but the third needed slight alignment in the program. Although not a lovely picture, it is useful, concerning what is replacing single family homes in my neighborhood.
Low-light experiments continue, but I conclude at this point that the F600 will give me what I bought it for. One low-light shot, in a mirror at a restaurant, is appended, slightly processed. It is far from the quality of a good DSLR at this level, but usable, I think.
The JZ300 was a neat little 10x zoom 12 mp pocket camera I carried around a lot. The F600 is a slightly larger and heavier pocket brick, has a bewildering collection of menu possibilities, and Amazon has it new and used at very good prices. I was attractred to the possibility of 16 MP, greater expanded dynamic range, 24mm wide equiv. and a longer zoom, and the more remote possibility of usable 3200 ISO. I was also attracted to the raw option it offers. I should add that my first camera was a Speed Graphic, so you can imagine that I value portability at my age.
My conclusions in brief:
16 MP is an illusion. The L files are bigger than the M files but offer no greater resolution. Lens issue? No, the JZ300 files have as much resolution. All start to pixilate at a little over 100% viewing. Anyway, many of the F600 modes require the M size file anyway, as Mr. Letkeman has made clear. (M results in an 8 MP file.)
The lens is nice, a little gone at the corners at full wide, not bothersome at web sizes, and the full zoom is sharp, with quite good stabilization, if slow. The Auto ISO 1600 (or 3200) makes up for that, nicely if the situation calls in only 800 or so, usably if you need more but will post-process extensively. (One's tolerance for grain rises with age: I am accustomed to Plus X processed in D76.) The EXR shooting options are clever and I am still experimenting with using one of them for quick response to varying situations. But the choice they give of High Dynamic Range priority or Resolution priority are meaningless to me because of the limitations of the lens/sensor/software in the camera.
Dynamic Range choices are mostly meaningless at 200% in terms of holding highlights and shadows. 400% shows slight improvement. But the real advantage of the camera, for static scenes, is its Exposure Bracketing option. Shooting at correct exposure, 1 stop under and 1 over (the max change it offers) makes it possible to far outdo the one-shot DR method, which works by exposing half of the pixels for less than the chosen exposure. I use the program "Dynamic Photo HDR5" to process these three exposures. I had already begun using this program with the JZ300, where I had to change the exposures manually and reshoot twice. Dynamic Photo HDR5 makes aligning the three shots possible in a manual operation that is very clever. Now, with the F600, the three shots, which happen within one second, can be handheld with no or little misallingment and are easy to check and correct in the HDR work flow.
I am posting two images done with in-camera HD 400% and with AE bracketing, three shots into one by the Dynamic Photo HDR program. It was hand held, and two of the images matched but the third needed slight alignment in the program. Although not a lovely picture, it is useful, concerning what is replacing single family homes in my neighborhood.
Low-light experiments continue, but I conclude at this point that the F600 will give me what I bought it for. One low-light shot, in a mirror at a restaurant, is appended, slightly processed. It is far from the quality of a good DSLR at this level, but usable, I think.
my $172 F550 is an amazing camera, but at $300 it wouldn't offer me enough compared to another SLR lens. I know my F550 lens will struggle with some images but it's compact and competent in nearly all of my typical circumstances, and using raw it can surprise me. As Kim notes it's the class of the 1/2" sensor scale, and competes well with many 1/1.7+ models. 
