DPInterface Fujifilm FinePix F100fd Review
Brad Soo - September 30th, 2008

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd is the descendant of Fujifilm's venerable F-series of cameras, well-known for their high-ISO capabilities. While the previous F-series cameras sacrificed crazy high megapixel counts for quality high ISO at 6 megapixels, the F100fd breaks this trend and plays "follow the market" by boasting its high ISO capabilities with a whopping 12 megapixels. Let's find out if the F100fd continues the Fujifilm's tradition offering high image quality characteristics...

Box packaging

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd comes bundled with your average in-the-box contents as any other digital camera:

  • Lithium-ion rechargeable battery
  • Battery charger
  • Wrist strap
  • USB and A/V cables
  • Software CD
  • User's manual

First off, the F100fd has a single memory card slot which supports two kinds of memory: xD-Picture cards and the more popular SD cards. This is a very welcome move from Fujifilm, since SD cards are used more universally in electronic devices and come in larger maximum capacities compared to their almost-proprietary xD counterpart. I'd recommend getting at least a 2 GB card for this 12 megapixel camera.

After that comes the included lithium-ion battery pack... The Finepix F100fd doesn't even last half as long as its predecessors. It's only rated for 220 shots, which is just below average nowadays, compared to the class-leading 580 shots of the F30fd.

Extras

There are just two accessories available for the F100fd: an underwater case and AC adapter for the camera. Naturally there's camera cases available as well.

 

Camera Tour

The FinePix F100fd looks a lot sleeker and less box-like compared to previous cameras in this line. The F100fd looks good and well-built too; made out of metal and plastic, with the chrome finishing to the buttons on the back adding a touch of elegance. And speaking of buttons, the FinePix F100fd has well-spaced out and few buttons, so there's no clutter around here. The 5X zoom lens over here is right in the middle of the pack of 4X-6X zoom mid-sized cameras.

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd measures 97.7 x 58.9 x 23.4 mm and weighs 170 g, which is still compact though not as skinny as some other cameras.

The front of the FinePix F100fd features a 5X optical zoom lens, equivalent to 28 – 140 mm. The coverage is wider on both ends of the lens compared to previous Fujifilm F-cameras, though with an aperture range of f3.3 – 5.1, it's just a tad slower. The FinePix F100fd's lens also features optical image stabilization, something which wasn't available on the previous F-series cameras. Optical image stabilization, as the name says, helps to reduce blur in photos caused by shaky hands... more on this later in the review.

Like some of Fujifilm's other cameras, the FinePix F100fd uses a Fujifilm SuperCCD behind its lens, which has lower noise characteristics than traditional CCD sensors.

To the top right, there's an AF-assist light and flash unit. The AF-assist light provides illumination which helps the F100fd to autofocus in low-light and also acts as a visual self-timer countdown. The flash has average power and has a maximum range of 4.3 m at wide-angle and 2.8 m at telephoto.

Moving on to the back of the camera, there's a 2.7 inch LCD. The 230,000 pixel LCD is sharp and fluid, even more so when you activate the display's 60 FPS mode, and viewable in both indoor and outdoor conditions.

There are four buttons, two each on the top and bottom right of the camera. The top two are the F-button and Face Detection buttons. The F-button brings up a shortcut menu for easy access to several camera settings. Here's the F-Menu (I'm supposing 'F' stands for 'Function'):

  • ISO (100 - 12800; Auto 400-3200)
  • Dynamic range (Auto, 100%, 200%, 400%)
  • Power management priority (Power save, AF priority, LCD priority)
  • Image quality (Pick an image resolution up till 12 MP)
  • FinePix color (Standard, chrome, monochrome)

The FinePix F100fd features manual ISO selection from the entire 100 - 12800 range and also Auto ISO, where the camera chooses the setting for you. However, you can also pick an ISO value between the range of 400-3200, and that'll be the max the camera will go in Auto ISO.

Going on to the bottom two buttons; they are the DISPlay/BACK and playback buttons. The DISPlay button toggles the information being displayed on the screen and lets you go 'back' from one menu screen to another.

As you can see, there's plenty of space on the back of the F100fd, so you can get a good grip of the camera when holding it. Then there's the five-way controller, primarily used to navigate menus. It has the usual press the center to confirm button and the directional controls have their respective shortcuts:

  • Up – Image stabilization mode (On/off)
  • Down – Self-timer (Off, 2 or 10 seconds)
  • Left – Macro mode (On/off)
  • Right – Flash mode (Auto, on, off, slow sync; red-eye reduction can be activated for all modes)
  • Center - OK/Virtual dial; hold for Main Menu


The virtual mode dial... and the MENU option inside it!

The 'wheel' around the center button controller also serves as a rotary dial, which means you can spin it to navigate menus and literally scroll through photos. In shooting mode, it also serves as a mode dial, which has disappeared here on the F100fd. I have no gripes about the rotary dial doing double duty for mode selection, hence saving valuable real estate needed for a dedicated mode dial. What I don't like here is that the F100fd's main menu is buried deep inside here as one of the 'modes'. Of course, you can hold down the OK button to bring up the same thing... but that isn't as quick as just a simple 'real' MENU button, is it?

Over here on the top of the FinePix F100fd is power button and shutter button. The shutter button has a zoom lever wrapped around it: Tug it to the right to zoom in, and to the left to zoom out. There's also an infrared port here, and using what Fujifilm calls IrSimple, it allows you to beam photos between two Fujifilm cameras. I think WiFi or even Bluetooth would have been more useful here, since I cannot imagine how long it'll take just to beam a single 12 megapixel photo to, let's say, share with a friend's camera via infrared!

This is the side of the Fujifilm FinePix F100fd when it's powered on – the lens extends from the body but not as much as you'll see...

This is the FinePix F100fd's lens when extended at full zoom. That's quite a bit of extension as you can see.

On this side of the camera has a wrist strap loop as well as a single port hidden behind a rubber-hinged plastic cover. This port is used for USB and A/V connections.

Over here at the bottom of the camera, you'll find the usual memory card/battery area, plastic tripod mount and speaker. The door itself is quite sturdy but you can't open it while the camera is on a tripod. The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd's single memory card slot supports two kinds of memory: the standard issue SD/SDHC cards and the *ahem* more proprietary *ahem* xD-Picture cards.

Taking pictures (Shooting mode)

There's a fairly average amount of info shown on the FinePix F100fd's display, including exposure information, framing gridlines, so all that's missing here is a live histogram. A battery indicator is available as well

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd has a dynamic range increase feature which I highlighted earlier in the F-menu. You can increase it to 200% (min ISO 200) or 400% (min ISO 400) so bright areas of photos won't be completely white and 'blown out' (too bright). The only slight compromise that has to be made here is a slight increase in noise thanks to the compulsory ISO boost at higher settings.

In the not-so-easily accessed menu I talked about in the Camera Tour section, you can change some other photo-related settings as well as enter the setup menu. The picture options are:

  • Exposure compensation (+/-2 in 1/3 increments)
  • Metering method aka Photometry (Multi, average, spot)
  • White balance (Auto, shade, daylight, incandescent, fluorescent warm white or cool white, custom white balance)
  • Continuous shooting - more on this later
  • Autofocus mode (center, multi, continuous AF)

There are many scene modes on the F100fd, and am I glad that wheel spins thru the virtual mode dial quickly: portrait, portrait enhancer, landscape, sport, night, fireworks, sunset, snow, beach, underwater, museum, party, flower and text. The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd has a 10 cm macro mode at wide-angle (not really that near to subjects) and 50 cm at telephoto.

Of course, there's Natural Light mode as well, made famous by the FinePix F100fd's predecessors. This mode increases ISO in an attempt to take a sharp photo without flash (and it works well). Natural Light with Flash is a more recent mode which takes two photos; one using Natural Light and the other with flash, so to give you a choice of two photos (of course, you can keep both as well).

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd has the mode comprehensive Face Detection feature that I've seen on a digital camera so far; it can detect up to 10 faces at any angle, profile, tilted-or-not and even upside down. In addition to detecting faces, the camera will automatically remove any red-eye detected in those faces.

Video Recording

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd has a standard VGA movie mode, recording at 30 FPS with sound up till 2 GB per clip. You can also opt to record at a lower 320 x 240 QVGA resolution but still at 30 FPS. Unfortunately, you can't use optical zoom during filming, neither can you turn on image stabilization. Movie quality was average here, with very standard features, nothing extraordinary about the FinePix F100fd's movie mode.

 

Performance

Start up time for the Fujifilm FinePix F100fd was a little more below average compared to most 2008 cameras, taking about 2.4 seconds to power on. Thankfully, from there on, things are much faster; like average focusing times being around 1/5 to 1/2 second, with low light autofocus taking not much longer, locking focus almost definitely under one second.

Shot-to-shot speed - 1 shot every 1.8 seconds, above average
Flash recharge time using a fully charged battery – 4 seconds on average

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd also has several (and fairly confusing) burst modes which I'll explain here:

  • Normal "top-3" takes three photos at 1.7 FPS
  • Normal "final-3" takes up to 40 photos at 1.7 FPS but only saves the last three taken before you let go of the shutter button
  • High-speed top-12 shoots at 5 FPS for up to 12 shots BUT the resolution must be 3 MP or lower
  • High-speed final-12 does almost the same thing as its 'normal final-3' counterpart; it takes up to 40 shots, this time at 5 FPS and only saves the last 12 taken before release of the shutter button. The resolution must be below 3 MP over here as well
  • Long period mode takes photos at a little over one photo every 2 seconds (that's 0.5 FPS) since the camera refocuses between shots; there appears to be no limit to the photos you can take in this mode

So which burst mode should you choose? Well, I'd use one of the 'final' modes; since you can do practically the same thing as those 'top' modes by counting shots and letting go when appropriate. The long period is too slow to do anything useful, but that's just me.

The performance patterns of the FinePix F100fd's burst modes seem to imply a fairly small buffer, which is offset by quick processing and storage throughput. Thus the fast performance but limited number of shots the camera can take.

The camera's lens goes from wide-angle to telephoto very quickly in just 1.1 seconds... and that's a 5X lens too! That lens is equally fast in retracting back into the camera when the camera turns off within two seconds.

In general, the Fujifilm FinePix F100fd is a decent performer, focusing and taking pictures quickly. With the exception of the burst mode, everything else is pretty fast. It would have been nice though, if Fujifilm had added a bigger buffer to the mix and combined the various confusing burst modes into one or two good ones.

Image Quality

Now let's see some full-sized crops from the FinePix F100fd's photos:


ISO 100 (f3.3, 1/4 sec)


ISO 200 (f3.3, 1/6 sec)


ISO 400 (f3.3, 1/9 sec)


ISO 800 (f3.3, 1/20 sec)


ISO 1600 (f3.3, 1/45 sec)


ISO 3200 (f3.3, 1/110 sec)


ISO 6400 (f3.3, 1/170 sec)


ISO 12800 (f3.3, 1/350 sec)

ISO 100, 200 and 400 are all very good and practically noise-free. ISO 800 does contain noise, but it looks better than most other cameras (that's what the Fujifilm F-series cameras are known for). Unfortunately ISO 1600 image quality isn't looking good and acceptable for only downsizing to below 2 MP, in my opinion.

Things do get ugly at ISO 3200 and as we approach the higher two settings, 6400 and 12800, image quality is really bad... and you're forced to use a setting below 3 megapixels as well. Also, white balance makes a noticeable shift in the ISO 12800 photo.

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd exhibits some noticeable barrel distortion at the wide end of the lens and also some corner softness. Chromatic aberration (color fringing) levels are low in photos. Red-eye is almost non-existant thanks to the automatic software removal in-camera.

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd has very good image quality in general, its ISO performance is better than most other compact cameras, particularly at ISO 400 and 800 where the difference is noticeable. Unfortunately, it isn't like last time that the FinePix F10 beat competing cameras by a far margin, the F100fd's ISO 1600 and above settings aren't more usable than the same settings on other cameras, it's only at lower ISO settings that you see the difference.

Photo gallery

Check those photos out in full in the Fujifilm FinePix F100fd photo gallery!

Playback

For a compact camera with fairly advanced shooting functions, the FinePix F100fd has a basic playback mode compared to its picture-taking modes. There's the usual image protection, rotation, resize, cropping, voice memo, print marking and basic slideshow. The red-eye removal feature which operates automatically in shooting mode is available here too.

 

There are several ways you can view your photos on the Fujifilm FinePix F100fd: single shot, date and thumbnail view. A feature called 'Micro-thumbnail' mode shows up to 100 photos at a go... I can't see this feature being used often to view thumbnails though, more like for skipping thru shots if you have several hundred of them in your memory card. By hitting the dedicated Face Detection button on the back of the camera, you can also move and zoom to faces in photos.

The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd doesn't show you much about your photos: some exposure information (shutter speed, aperture and ISO), date taken and image resolution/quality are all you'll get. So you're missing other shooting info, a histogram and the mode the picture was taken in.

Conclusion

The FinePix F100fd is a compact camera with a nice 5X optical zoom lens, complete with sensor shift-image stabilization. The F100fd finds itself competing against the likes of other compact cameras which are, mostly, thinner... and the thing that the FinePix F100fd can use to set itself apart is by boasting better image quality characteristics than the others.

For most part, that is true, the F100fd has overall very good image quality and performs noticeably better specifically at ISO 400 and 800 but doesn't blow away the competition as much as its predecessors did (which incidentally boasted modest 6 megapixel resolutions). Fujifilm just had to jump in with 12 megapixels on this camera, did they now?

In addition, the FinePix F100fd has a nice LCD display, fast camera performance (except the slow startup time and indecent, confusing burst modes) and useful features such as redeye detection and removal as well as a fancy dynamic range booster feature (albeit at the cost of higher ISO). But well, with those steps forwards, the F100fd has taken some steps backwards as well compared to older models in the range: battery life has gone from class-leading to below average and ergonomics wise; the mode dial is missing and I didn't quite care for the main menu being hidden away. So much for having the potential to be the ultimate, perfect camera.

So your questions will now be answered: is the Fujifilm FinePix F100fd a nice camera? Definitely. Is it as impressive as its predecessors? Not quite, in fact, it did take one or two steps back. The Fujifilm FinePix F100fd is still a good low-light point-and-shoot you should look at which will handle both indoor and outdoor shooting with relative ease.

What's hot:

  • Stylish camera with an image-stabilized 5X lens
  • Support for two memory card types (SD/SDHC and xD-Picture cards)
  • Camera performance is snappy (with one exception)
  • 2.7 inch LCD is sharp and visible indoors and out
  • Dynamic range setting allows increase in DR
  • Automatic redeye removal and Natural Light mode
  • Image quality is very good, better than other cameras

What's not:

  • Slow startup time
  • Below average battery life
  • No manual exposure control modes, not enough playback info
  • Main menu not easily accessible; too many burst modes
  • High barrel distortion at wide-angle

Recommended Accessories:

  • 2 GB SD card or larger SDHC card
  • Extra battery pack

Content ©2005 - 2008 Digital Photography Interface. All rights reserved.
All trademarks and images are property of their respective owners.
No part of this website may be copied, posted or used anywhere
without the written permission of the website owner.

.