f100fd field test

Maybe I spoke too soon about moving on. While waiting for my XSi to get here on Thursday, here's a report on how the Fuji F100fd handled my first photo outing with it: the 2008 How Weird Street Faire in San Francisco.

(Apologies for the tiny images in this blog: Blogger and Flickr play the Six-Hot-Dogs-Eight-Buns game. Click on the images to access larger sizes on Flickr.)

how weird street, san francisco

Generally, the camera did quite well, which was not too surprising from an image quality standpoint, given what I'd already seen from it. Exposures were correct in the vast majority of shots, if by correct you mean the highlights were usually not blown, albeit sometimes at the cost of an underexposed subject. On a partly cloudy day in San Francisco, which is really tricky as far as dynamic range goes, the Fuji showed far more usable dynamic range than the FX35. Plus, Fujichrome is alive and well in beautifully saturated colors straight out of the camera.

(Raising the black level, which I did with every shot, caused the colors to be oversaturated in some cases. Actually, I'm curious as to why the histogram almost never touches zero on this camera. I'm pretty sure the lens is not as high contrast as, say, Canon prime, but it could be deliberate too: maybe Fuji thinks we like our shadows brighter.)

There were a number of areas in which the camera came up short, though. First, let me point out that this is only the second "crowd" event I've shot with a digicam, the first being the 5th Anniversary of the Iraq War Protest. That earlier event, being a succession of people talking on stage and then marching, had highly predictable motion, and thus was not as tough a test as a street fair for photojournalist-type shooting.

Having said that, the only thing I remember being particularly slow about the FX35 I used then was the zoom speed. It's hard to call either the Panasonic FX35 or the Fujifilm F100fd the faster camera, since each is faster at different things, but my impression, in the brief time I've had to use each camera, is that the FX35 strikes a slightly better balance for speed.

regulation uniform

I took too many shots of someone's back-three-quarters profile because the F100fd took several seconds to startup, extend, zoom, and focus. I lost over a dozen frames to misfocus, presumably because I pressed the shutter release so urgently the camera took the shot without bothering to focus. Finally, the zoom speed, while quick going from end to end of its range, takes just about as long (or longer?) to zoom one step. This is because the lens overshoots, and then comes back a fair amount before it stops; only then can you can assess the framing. This was a problem because my favorite way of taking photos at such events is to get close, down on one knee (to isolate the subject against the sky), and then zoom to frame. This doesn't work with the F100fd, because the fidgety back-and-forth movement of the zoom makes it quite tricky to get the framing in the fraction of a second before the magic moment disappears. Instead, I find I have to decide what field of view I want first, zoom to there, and then position myself to get the right framing. Takes more time, and requires better pre-visualization skills. Maybe I'll work on it, but chances are, with another DSLR on the way, I'll stick to my lazy ways.

Don't get me wrong: this camera is about as fast as pocket cameras come these days. It's just a long way from the instant response of the best rangefinders and DSLRs. Too be honest, the Fuji is actually faster at startup and focus speed than my old Canon Digital Rebel w/70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS (granted, my slowest-focus lens), although the lens' zoom ring more or less makes up for the difference.

eco-roadie

Besides the framing issues with the fidgety zoom mechanism, I also ran into problems with the zoom range itself. While the 32mm (140mm-equivalent) long end came in handy in crowd shooting, I found the 6.4mm (28mm-equivalent) wide end restrictive—I framed too tight many of my otherwise favorite shots. That probably sounds like whining since a grand total of two currently-produced pocket digicams go wider than 28mm (the Panasonic FX35 and Ricoh GX100) and my walkaround SLR lens also only goes to 27mm, but I guess the world I see usually seems to fit at 24mm.

forgot his rain dance

One area where the camera has an overabundance is depth of field. The inability to blur out backgrounds is just something you have to learn to live with on small-sensor cameras, and isolating subjects in crowds is where DSLRs truly are in a class by themselves.

Finally, the camera ran out of juice before I was quite ready to leave. I think this is because I switched to the fast focus option (which is tellingly under the Power Management menu, rather than the AF mode menu). The full charge only lasted just over 2-1/2 hours, for 148 shots. That's not even close to a full days' shooting. Even the CIPA-standard 230 shots would be borderline for me.

Then again, once I get a DSLR again, I will probably never again use the F100fd for a full days' shooting, unless as a backup. This street fair was really asking for a DSLR to do it justice, and I would've used one if I'd had one. So really, given the 70-80% success rate (counting all sharp, properly-exposed frames), it did better than I should've expect from a point-n-shoot camera. Overall, I'm actually quite impressed.