The Fantastic F60fd! [High ISO comparison shots]

I couldn't resist, with the F31fd being legendary for compact ISO performance, I had to get the new F60fd for myself. It's fantastic. I'll start with the downer: the LCD screen is a bit poop compared to the canon compacts - but good enough - You don't really see the quality of the image until you upload.

Apart from that, this is a smart piece of kit. ISO 6400?? My 5D doesn't do that, at 9 x the price...

Ok fair enough, that's a stupid comparison - but it's really satisfiying to use high ISOs on such a small camera. The point here is to be realistic. If the shots being taken are for blowing up to A2, poster size, commercial resale - BUY A PROPER CAMERA. A compact is just that - a compact - like a smart car or an A-class Merc. I had my suspicions but my sister-in-law just bought an A-class and it's a beautiful, stable, comfortable motor that serves it's purpose - commuting in style and comfort around urbania. A bit like the F60fd - a fantastic piece of kit that serves it's purpose - and then some.

I had heard about Fuji's face detection but never took it seriously due to the fact that I have eyes. Using my eyes, I can usually see the face of the person I am taking a picture of. Ok, I'll lay off the facetiousness. Good word, that. Facetiousness. Doesn't it mean "Funny as shit"?

The face detection is cool for taking a pic of ourselves (me and the old dear) and knowing the faces will be in focus - also, it's so quick that you can just snap away knowing that the subjects faces will always get picked up and focussed on my the camera. I realised how accurate it was when I pointed it down to choose a meny option and it green-boxed the face on a leaflet on the table - then it green-boxed the buddha's face in the test shot. But it wouldn't recognise my cat for some reason - I guess the skeletal maths algorithms only fit human faces. For the first time, I found a useful "extra feature" that I will leave on...

And another one: SRAuto - automatically adjusts for the scene you are taking - telling you it thinks it's a portrait or landscape or night or macro. No buttons to press! I love this. I hate forgetting to press "Macro" and wondering why the camera won't focus on the close-ups of my subjects moles/acne/eyeballs/scars etc.. That sounds really wierd. Ok, let's be formal. When you skip to the park with your partner in your hand to take snaps of the daisies and bumblebees, SRAuto will automatically shift to macro mode as you approach the respective flower or insect - literally just point and click.

Ok - my favourite. My pet digicam hate is focus speed. I often offend my wife and others because I get rage and my eye starts twitching when I waste whole minutes of my life waiting for cheapo digicam focus motors and sensors to see me (mobile phones are the worst). Fortunately the power management on the F60fd will save my friends and relatives from certain death as it allows you to increase power to the focussing system. It's not a massive improvement but there is still an increase - this is important, as the macro mode increases the focal range and slows it down. Comfortably fast.

There's more - like funky natural light modes that kick-in the high ISO without needing to know about apertures and ISO, and manual mode for geeks to override the auto functions etc.. All viewable in the Spec on Fuji's site. No I'm going to link - download GChrome, type fuji in the bar and I'm sure you'll find it.

On to the important part: The ISO test shots (click through for the flickr pages).

A little noise in the shadow but usable enough.

A little more noise but nothing to cry about

Dirty and noise but the detail is intact - again, with a little noise removal - very usable. 

And incidentally, 6MP is much more usable - smaller files that compress to friendly email size but still print big!

Yes, it's dirty, grainy, noisy - but incredible clean detail in the lighter areas

Ok, it's only 3MP and it's very noise - but wait - when would you actually use this? At night with virtually no ambient light - nightclubs/seedy wine bars/streets with no streetlights/dark alleyways - erm... do you really need detail? I mean 3MP will print a 6x4 easily. And noise? With a little tweaking in photoshop, the image becomes usable again...:

Sid, the bhudda head, is working hard these days - but nothing more to test until the D90 arrives. Sid will meditate upon the universal implications of clean ISO 6400 and SLR cameras with movie mode...

K