Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 16 megapixel JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 5.5Mb.

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR produced images of good quality during the review period. It handled noise fairly well, with a little noise appearing at the relatively slow speed of ISO 200 and then becoming progressively worse at the faster settings of ISO 400 and 800, along with a smearing of fine detail. The fastest full-resolution settings of ISO 1600 and 3200 suffer from an even greater loss of detail and colour saturation. The headling-grabbing settings of ISO 6400 and 12800 are both actually shot at a reduced resolution (medium and small respectively) and they're noisy too. Chromatic aberrations were well controlled, with limited purple fringing effects appearing only in high contrast situations. The 16 megapixel images were just a little soft straight out of the camera at the default sharpen setting and require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera sharpening level.

Macro performance is excellent, allowing you to focus as close as 1cm away from the subject when the lens is set to wide-angle. Commendably barrel distortion is well controlled even at the 24mm focal length. The built-in flash worked well indoors, with no red-eye and adequate overall exposure, although there is noticeable vignetting at 24mm. The anti-shake system works very well when hand-holding the camera in low-light conditions or when using the telephoto end of the zoom range. The maximum shutter speed of 30 seconds allows the cameras to capture enough light for most after-dark situations.

The Pro Low-Light scene mode produces better image clarity at high ISO levels at the expense of a loss of fine detail, while the Pro Focus mode effectively throws the background out of focus for portraits. The Sweep Panorama mode works largely as advertised, making it simple to take hand-held low-light and wide-vista shots, although there is a clear ghosting effect around any moving subjects. The EXR modes offer a choice between shooting at full 16 megapixel resolution in High Resolution (HR) mode, or an 8 megapixel image in the Low Noise (SN) mode for shooting without flash in low light conditions, or the Dynamic Range (DR) mode to achieve an optimal balance between shadows and highlights.

Noise

There are 8 ISO settings available on the Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting:

JPEG	RAW
ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)
ISO 12800 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR's 15x zoom lens provides a focal length of 24-360mm in 35mm terms, as demonstrated below.

24mm	360mm

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are a little bit soft at the default sharpening setting, and benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

File Quality

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR has 2 different image quality settings available, with Fine being the highest quality option. Here are some 100% crops which show the quality of the various options, with the file size shown in brackets.

16M Fine (5.31Mb) (100% Crop)	16M Normal (3.78Mb) (100% Crop)
16M RAW (24.1Mb) (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR handled chromatic aberrations very well during the review. Just a little purple fringing was present around the edges of objects in high-contrast situations, as shown in the example below.

Example 1 (100% Crop)

Macro

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR offers a Super Macro setting that allows you to focus on a subject that is 1cm away from the camera. The first image shows how close you can get to the subject in Macro mode (in this case a compact flash card). The second image is a 100% crop.

Macro Shot	100% Crop

Flash

The flash settings on the Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR are Auto, Forced Flash, Suppressed Flash, Slow Synchro, and any of those modes combined with Red-eye Reduction. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (24mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (24mm)
Flash Off - Wide Angle (360mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (360mm)

And here are some portrait shots. Neither the Auto or Red-eye reduction mode caused any amount of red-eye.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red Eye Reduction	Red Eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR's maximum shutter speed is 30 seconds, which is great news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 30 seconds at ISO 100. I've included a 100% crop of the image to show what the quality is like.

Night Shot	Night Shot (100% Crop)

Anti Shake

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR has an anti-shake mechanism, which allows you to take sharp photos at slower shutter speeds than other digital cameras. To test this, I took 2 handheld shots of the same subject with the same settings. The first shot was taken with anti shake turned off, the second with it turned on. Here are some 100% crops of the images to show the results. As you can see, with anti shake turned on, the images are much sharper than with anti shake turned off. This feature really does seem to make a difference and could mean capturing a successful, sharp shot or missing the opportunity altogether.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Anti Shake Off (100% Crop)	Anti Shake On (100% Crop)
1/8th / 24mm
1/5th / 360mm

Panorama Mode

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR allows you to take panoramic images very easily by 'sweeping' with the camera while keeping the shutter release depressed. The camera does all the processing and stitching, and there are three views available. The main problems are that the resulting image is of fairly low resolution - 1080 pixels high and 5760 pixels wide for the 360 degree image - moving objects are recorded as "ghost" images, and different lighting sources cause obvious vertical streaks to appear.

120 Degrees

Full-size Image

180 Degrees

Full-size Image

360 Degrees

Full-size Image

EXR Modes

Fujifilm's EXR sensor can be utilized in one of three ways by the photographer. There's a choice between shooting at full 16 megapixel resolution in High Resolution (HR) mode, or an 8 megapixel image in the Low Noise (SN) mode for shooting without flash in low light conditions, or the Dynamic Range (DR) mode to achieve an optimal balance between shadows and highlights. The latter offers five strengths ranging from 100-1600%. If you can't decide which is best for a chosen scene or subject, then just leave the camera on the scene-detecting EXR Automatic Mode and let it choose for itself.

Resolution Priority	Resolution Priority (100% Crop)
High ISO & Low Noise	High ISO & Low Noise (100% Crop)
D-Range Priority - 100%	D-Range Priority - 200%
D-Range Priority - 400%	D-Range Priority - 800%
D-Range Priority - 1600%

Pro Focus

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR's Pro Focus mode makes it easier to achieve a blurred background, perfect for portraits where compact digicams traditionally struggle, with three strengths of blurring on offer.

Pro Focus 1	Pro Focus 1 (100% Crop)
Pro Focus 2	Pro Focus 2 (100% Crop)
Pro Focus 3	Pro Focus 3 (100% Crop)

Pro Low-Light

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR's Pro Low-Light scene mode produces better image clarity at high ISO levels, with the camera automatically taking a series of four high sensitivity/low-noise shots in quick succession which are then combined together using in-camera processing into an image with less noise than the single exposures. The main drawback is a noticeable softening of fine detail.

Pro Low-Light Off	Pro Low-Light On
Pro Low-Light Off	Pro Low-Light On

Film Simulation Modes

The Fujifilm Finepix F550 EXR offers 5 different film simulation modes to help repliatce the look of your favourite film stock from the past.

Provia / Standard	Velvia / Vivid
Astia / Soft	Black & White
Sepia

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR camera, which were all taken using the 16 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Fujifilm RAW (RAF) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera / Flash Raised

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera / Turned On

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / F-Mode Menu

Rear of the Camera / EXR Mode

Rear of the Camera / Advanced Mode

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR builds on the success of the previous F300 model with a new 16 megapixel EXR sensor, which expands the ISO range up to 12,800, offers fast continuous shooting speeds and slow-motion movies, and adds full 1080p HD movies. GPS functionality is the icing on a very rich cake, working well in both rural and built-up areas, something that most cameras with this feature struggle with, although it does adversely affect the battery life. It's not all good news, however, as the 16 megapixel sensor also results in more noise and loss of fine detail than on the 12 megapixel F300, first appearing at the slow speed of ISO 200 and becoming all too obvious at ISO 400. The F550 EXR also suffers from the same slow RAW processing speeds and high price tag that adversely affected its predecessor.

Just like its sister model, the HS20 EXR, the F550 EXR suffers from pedestrian writing speeds for RAW files and poorer image quality once you get above ISO 200. Having to wait more than 5 seconds between every RAW image quickly becomes annoying, despite the headline-grabbing 8fps burst mode, and noise quickly rears its ugly head at ISO 400, becoming progressively worse throughout the rest of the ISO range. The flash automatically popping up when you turn the camera on, rather than just when you've actually selected to use a flash mode, is also annoying, though like a partner's annoying habit it's a quirk that you gradually find yourself putting up with over time. The final bugbear is price. More expensive in the UK than the F300 EXR was on launch, £329 / $329 feels like a lot to pay for a compact camera, however well-specified it is.

The Fujifilm Finepix F550 EXR is a stylish, full-featured and likeable compact camera, with the 15x zoom opening up a wealth of framing possibilities, but the move to a 16 megapixel sensor and the resulting drop in image quality rather spoils the party. The F550 EXR is still a good camera, with a long list of stand-out features and a logical, well-thought-out interface, but as with the HS20 EXR that we reviewed recently, we can't help feeling that the model that the F550 replaces actually produces better photos.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	5
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	3.5
Value for money	3.5

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Fujifilm FinePix F550 EXR from around the web.

Specifications

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