Fujifilm FinePix F40fd Review at DigiCamReview

#1 philltx

fujifilm finepix F40fd review

Pros:
When I first opened this camera and started taking shots around the house, I was really amazed how well it could pick up objects in extreme low light situations. I've taken it out to the club and had my friends bring out their Canon SD700 cameras and take video of the same shoots I would do to do the one-to-one comparison and there is no comparison. The videos from canon SD700 didn't even come out, even after playing with the brightness/contrast settings with final cut pro, they still didn't come out. As the Fuji Finepix F40fd, the videos came out and with a little tweaking, they came out visibly. As for the low light sensitivity, it is the best I've seen hands down for a small digital point and shoot camera I'm able to come across. The menus are super fast and very intuitive. There's not alot of figure out and everything on the camera is very self explanatory. The flash recharge is super fast and it also has a small LED light which shines in low light situations when you are shooting video. A nice feature about the camera is you have the option to turn that little light off manually from the menu system on the camera. The camera startup time is blazing fast. As soon as your press the on button, the whole thing is ready to go. Most cameras I've seen have at least a 3 second delay before its lens is fully extended and operational and you can actually see what comes up on the lcd screen. As for pointing and shooting, it offers AutoFocus (AF) illumination and illumination. the illumination is a nice manual feature...it allows you to turn the light on and off. For clarification, the illumination light is a seperate light from the light thats used for the flash. AF illumination seems to affect the digital pictures digitally in the picture processing of the camera from what I can tell. Its a nice add on as well in certain situations. The camera only allows 2 video quality modes... 640 and 320 which I thought was kind of lame. 320 happens to be the size youtube.com suggests for its uploads. If you shoot videos in 640, you only have about 30 mins of take time on a 2GB card. In 320, you just have 1 hour and 20 mins. The battery lasts a good amount of time when you're just taking pictures. As far as driving it to see how much video it can take still remains to be tested. Having the SD card slot in this camera is a huge plus since my latop caomes with a sd card reader built in. Just pop it out and into the laptop and its ready for read. Battery gets good life and it comes with a charger adapter which you can plug into the wall (just as the canons do) rather than relying on an ac adapter to be plugged into to the camera at all times.

Cons:
Grainy Grainy Grainy....
All i can say is the biggest disappointment and determining factor in not recommending this camera to other people and sending them elsewhere when asked for suggestions is the grainness of not only the pictures but also the video is even worse. Even when I set the camera on the table and push the shoot button with the zoom all the way back at 35 mm, its still grainy under any lighting conditions, its still grainy. thats my biggest complaint about this camera. Its seems like the more you zoom in, the grainier the pictures become. I don't know what causes this or why it happens. I wish it had more options as far as video settings. videos are just crisper in decent indoor and daylight shooting. Must be the image stablization. Did I mention the pictures blur easily if you don't hold the camera absolutely still? you also have no control on the ISO selection either to vary the digital compensation. It seems to also to setting the highest iso setting in darker situations which is really ridiculous in most cases so pictures get over exposed in most cases.

Rather than return this camera, I decided to keep it to get those impromptu video shots. I'll be moving towards getting a canon sd800 for my vacation shots and eventually a sony Hi definition camcorder for video. Everything else is great about the camera with the exception of the graininess. This camera has alot of potential. Its has great usability, really intuitive, super fast flash recharging, and awesome low light sensitivity for a point and shoot camera. If it weren't for the graininess, I would have recommended it to my friends but instead, i'm gonna discourage it and send them elsewhere.

4:36 pm - Monday, May 14, 2007