I've had this camera for almost a year. I have gotten some great pictures with it. Like they say, you can't get a good picture if you don't have your camera with you. That's the reason I sold my Fuji S1 and held onto the 4700. I just never took the S1 anywhere because of its size. You can get great results with this camera once you learn all its "features."
Feature #1 There are two aperatures, one is 2.8 and the other is 7.0. There are no in-betweens. So when there is not alot of available light, your depth of field is greatly reduced (feature #2 compounds this problem).
#2. *VERY* poor low light focusing. As in almost none. You have to hunt for a focus point. Using the LCD is a necessity because the green light indicates slow exposure AND no focus lock, so its your guess as to which. This really hampers low light action shots. You have to pre-focus and just wait. And #1 doesn't help when the focus is off.
Until I got a hold on #1 & #2 75% of my night shots were blurry.
#3 Crummy flash. The range sucks and the droppoff is pretty strong after 8 feet. So this means a tripod is needed for anything but close shots. Action shots are out of the question in the dark.
#4 ISO 400 and 800 are VERY noisey. They should have gone 100, 200, 400. 800 is very BAD.
#5 Images are soft @ 4.3mp. Unsharp mask fixes this problem easily.
#6 Extreme ends of the zoom lens are pretty distorted. Avoid shots of buildings anything with lines...etc.
The colors and metering are spot on! All I do is an unsharp mask and I'm done. No other processing. The 4x6's and 5x7's look better than any SLR photos I took. 8x10's are decent but weren't nearly as good as the S1's. The video record mode is awesome except for the QT format, but virtualdub (freeware) will convert them to the format of your choice. Battery life is a non issue for me. 50-75 pics (enough to fill a 64 meg card) on NiMH rechargeables. In a pinch you can use alkalines for a couple of shots which is a nice feature.
Problems:
1. Focusing in low light
2. Smartmedia cards have to be re-insterted sometimes.
3. Lens has gotten stuck out several times (a little twist helps it back in)
4. ISO 800 is useless
5. Weak flash
Feature #1 There are two aperatures, one is 2.8 and the other is 7.0. There are no in-betweens. So when there is not alot of available light, your depth of field is greatly reduced (feature #2 compounds this problem).
#2. *VERY* poor low light focusing. As in almost none. You have to hunt for a focus point. Using the LCD is a necessity because the green light indicates slow exposure AND no focus lock, so its your guess as to which. This really hampers low light action shots. You have to pre-focus and just wait. And #1 doesn't help when the focus is off.
Until I got a hold on #1 & #2 75% of my night shots were blurry.
#3 Crummy flash. The range sucks and the droppoff is pretty strong after 8 feet. So this means a tripod is needed for anything but close shots. Action shots are out of the question in the dark.
#4 ISO 400 and 800 are VERY noisey. They should have gone 100, 200, 400. 800 is very BAD.
#5 Images are soft @ 4.3mp. Unsharp mask fixes this problem easily.
#6 Extreme ends of the zoom lens are pretty distorted. Avoid shots of buildings anything with lines...etc.
The colors and metering are spot on! All I do is an unsharp mask and I'm done. No other processing. The 4x6's and 5x7's look better than any SLR photos I took. 8x10's are decent but weren't nearly as good as the S1's. The video record mode is awesome except for the QT format, but virtualdub (freeware) will convert them to the format of your choice. Battery life is a non issue for me. 50-75 pics (enough to fill a 64 meg card) on NiMH rechargeables. In a pinch you can use alkalines for a couple of shots which is a nice feature.
Problems:
1. Focusing in low light
2. Smartmedia cards have to be re-insterted sometimes.
3. Lens has gotten stuck out several times (a little twist helps it back in)
4. ISO 800 is useless
5. Weak flash