Fujifilm FinePix F100fd review

We put the new Fujifilm FinePix F series offering through its paces

Fujifilm’s new compact offering combines the company’s eighth-generation sensor and 5x wide-angle Fujinon lens with some of the most advanced technologies available in a compact camera. Fujifilm’s predecessor, the F50fd, was a fantastic camera with some great features, but does the F100fd live up to it?

Out of the box, this camera is very easy to set-up, the visual difference from the F50fd is already clear, with no option wheel on the back. The camera is nicely designed, with a sleek, metallic, solid-weighted feel; even the side plates are metallic, down to the fine detail of the wrist strap and connection covers.

The screen is a great size and, with no viewfinder, this is an important piece of the camera whether it be creating compositions, tweaking all the capture settings or even retouching photos. The function buttons have been placed on the right-hand side of the screen, so as you hold the camera to take shots, your fingers have space to sit out of the way of the buttons.

The wide-angle lens has a superb field of view, it is perfect in nearly all situations, be it trying to fit all your friends into a picture or getting a beautiful, wide landscape shot.

The camera’s setup is almost a bit clunky; Fujifilm seem to have made some very simple control flaws here. Once you start to use the camera and discover its huge array of functions though, you have already adapted to its unique control system.

It’s hard to fault the actual functions on the camera, as they are very advanced and create very impressive results. The automatic settings are vast and specific, but also very quick to change if needed.

Don’t make the mistake of buying this camera without buying an additional memory card. The card starts setup on the 12 megapixel option and this will only give you a mere 11 photos at this setting. Switching down the pixel capture settings will allow more images to play with, and still give you great quality shots at a reasonable size.

If shooting on the 57MB internal memory then inserting a memory card to continue, the previous images are now not displayed in the image gallery. This proved annoying, so shooting either entirely on the internal memory or on a card is a must if you want to review them all on the move.

There is a huge range of automatic settings for all kinds of situations from snow to sunsets. The wheel dial on the back of the camera acts as a D-pad and a toggle wheel for images and settings, which is a really nice touch. Having the wheel on the back enables the camera to have two clicks and a turn to reach any setting on the camera.

The anti-shake function works very well and is especially good when using the camera over a crowd, full-stretch, looking through the LCD screen. The stabilisation of images taken in windy conditions were very impressive too.

The newly developed Face Detection 3.0 is simply incredible for picking out multiple faces; it seems to pick out faces at any angle almost instantly. Once it has picked them out, the camera will apply optimum focus and exposure for each face creating truly noticeable results. The portrait enhancer is also worth shouting about, with its beautiful smooth skin tones thanks to the cameras ultra-high sensitivity of ISO 12800.

The zoom toggle is neat and easy to use quickly while shooting, noise can build up in full zoom, but the camera still can take a great image at full zoom. Poor lighting can cause issues, as the flash is not as effective as you would hope.

This camera has an amazing ability to pick up text incredibly clearly, even without the specific text function activated. Shots can be incredibly detailed from this camera shooting on the maximum output, and when you change in the macro setting things just get better. The macro shots this camera can pick up in good light are phenomenal.

The image viewer has a lovely connection with the zoom, allowing up to 100 images with magnification on rollover on the screen. All images are very quickly accessible with the navigation wheel.

The images can be more personally viewed, and the camera provides controls to remove red-eye post-shot and crop images. One function on the camera that did appeal to us was the voice memo feature that allows you to add a 30-second audio clip onto each image. This can be a great feature if you are out taking shots and need to know what they are to reference them later, as the last thing you want slowing you down while taking photos is having to stop and write things down all the time.

This camera is a fine example of style and power combining to create something extraordinary. The F100fd is not a huge step away from its predecessor, but has a taken a clear step forward in terms of technology and build. The camera for me was unfortunately let down by some small button features, but it’s hard to fault this camera for sheer quality of images. In short, Fujifilm’s F100fd is a great offering for the compact camera market.