it's a keeper

After processing the first evening's photos and beginning on the second day's, I'm already hooked. Barring malfunctions, this one's a keeper.

My original assessments of the build (worrisome and worthy of a sub-$200 camera), aesthetics (a game effort, but still a bit square), speed (highly competent), user interface (horrible), and overall control level (less than I'd expect for the price and size) have not changed.

But the image quality is a big step up from the Canon SD450, which was a good sight better than the Panasonic FX35. Where there is fine detail involved, the F100fd's output is not as good as my 450D, but at smaller print sizes it'd be hard to tell the difference in a blind test. That was not true of the FX35.

Fuji and Panasonic have yet again lived up to their reputations for making, respectively, crappy cameras with great sensors, and great cameras with crappy sensors. You might ask why then didn't I go for a Canon, which appear to be great cameras with okay sensors?

Because, given decent-enough usability, image quality trumps all other considerations for me. The Fuji F100fd, if poorly thought out in places, has more than decent usability, and by far the best image quality I've seen in this size class.

Really, though, I have not yet used this camera the way it was meant to be used: for snapshots of people. While this camera is better than its competitors for technical pursuits like landscape, architecture, and studio photography, it is still a point-n-shoot. Those pursuits both allow and properly demand a larger camera with more control. Instead, Fuji repeatedly highlights "Face Detection 3.0" (even in their Annual Report), and in so doing are hinting at the real problem the F100fd attempts to solve: how to make your drunk friends at the club look appealing without lugging around a camera bag.