Hi Folks:
Well, when my walkaround camera died last week (purple sensor bloom all over the image, combined with nice, evenly spaced striations down each image) I decided it was time for something new. I was looking for a camera that I can carry with me when walking around town, something with enough manual control for me, but with enough automatic features for my wife to be comfortable with it. For some strange and inexplicable reason she isn't fascinated by f/stops and shutter speeds.
After doing some surfing and after wandering around to several different stores I finally purchased the Fujifilm FinePix S1500FD. To be honest, for about an hour or so I was first the proud owner of a FinePix S2000HD. In
almost every way the S2000 is an upgrade camera over the S1500, and since it was only marginally more expensive, I bought it and took it home. I returned it soon after, and for one specific reason. It was only after I'd unpacked it and read through the manual that I realized it has no aperture control. Not only is there no 'A' (aperture priority) mode, but even in 'M' (manual) mode there's no way to select a specific aperture. Program mode tends to use the maximum aperture and change the shutter speed, and for most of my work I'd rather control the depth of field than the shutter speed. To whomever at Fuji who decided this, give your head a shake! So, I returned the S2000 and brought home the S1500, which has the full complement of PSAM settings.
If you want the full specs for this camera I suggest:
http://www.fujifilm.ca/x17495.xml There are a number of features for this camera that I won't use so I'll pass over them. I didn't bother to even look at the included Fuji software as I really like Lightroom.
This is a camera that takes a little time - about two seconds to start up, about a second or so to focus lock. Sometimes the zoom toggle takes a second or so to respond, but I can't say when or why.The camera uses 4xAA batteries - either alkaline, NiMH or lithium. They don't recommend the use of NiCad batteries. The first time you insert the batteries and power up the camera it asks you what type of batteries you've installed; for NiMH batteries there's even a 'discharge' feature. The camera uses SD/ SDHC memory cards, and the batteries and the SD card slot share the same access point on the bottom of the camera. The battery door seems really flimsy, and the first time I opened it I thought it was going to fall off. I was at a camera repair store yesterday (something completely unrelated), and there was someone there paying $60 to install a new battery cover door on his Nikon. BTW, the S2000 has a sturdier battery door, and a separate place for the SD card slot. I installed a Lexar 8GB SDHC card and it gives me nearly 1600 images in 10M 'Fine' mode. Coming from a history of 12-exposure (120) and 36-exposure (35mm) rolls, 1600 images is more than I expect to ever make in a day.
The camera comes with a 12x (5.9mm-70.8mm - 35mm equivalent of 33-396 mm) optical zoom lens, and being Fuji the lens is of good quality. F/stops vary depending on the focal length, ranging from f/2.8-f/6.4 at wide angle, and f/5-f/8 at the telephoto end. Shutters speeds are from 8 seconds to 1/2000 second. The camera shoots at ISO 64-6400, although 3200 and 6400 are at 3M only.
ISO
100/200
400/800
100% crops
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The lens is surrounded by an outer lens barrel, and there is a separate lens cap that fits over this barrel. The cap comes with a tether that attaches to the neck strap lug, which is handy because if (like me) you forget to remove the cap before turning on the camera, the protruding lens will push the cap off. It does mean that you can't put the cap on while the camera is turned on. The camera is 10 megapixel (10M) with an image size of 3,648 × 2,736 pixels, although it also offers shooting modes at various lower resolutions, and it has a 1/ 2.3-inch CCD sensor. It also shoots 640x480 standard definition video. (the S2000HD, as the name implies, shoots 720p HD video). I won't elaborate on the 2/10 second self-timer, auto-shutoff and the other features one expects as standard these days.
The camera is smaller than a DSLR but fits reasonably well to hand. I like the extruded handle on the right hand side as it provides a comfortable grip. This is not anyone's 'shirt pocket' camera but it's light enough to carry around. It comes with a neck strap but I usually end up wrapping that around my wrist.
On the front is the lens, of course, and an AF assistance light. There's a pop-up flash, and the flash has both normal and slow-synch modes. There's also flash exposure compensation, but I haven't had any use for the flash yet. I'll assume it works as described.
On top there's the W-T zoom toggle, the shutter release button and Power on/off slide switch, as well as the the exposure mode dial. In addition to Auto and PSAM modes, there's a Custom setting (through the menu one can set a custom ISO, white balance, etc) and video. There's also a Panorama setting and two 'Scene' modes (portrait, sport, landscape, fireworks, night, etc.). The Panorama setting allows one to take 2 or 3 x 3M pictures and the camera will assemble them into a panoramic image. There's about a 10% overlap and the ghost image for alignment isn't overly obvious (to these eyes), but direct registration isn't necessary. There are options to pan images from left to right or from right to left. I recommend right to left because if one goes left to right, the frame counter sits in the middle of the ghost image. This isn't Photoshop or PTGUI, but for a $250 camera it works reasonably well. There's no manual exposure option for Panoramas.
Kelowna Storm Clouds
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There are two other buttons on top as well. One is the 'FD' (face detection) button, which when turned on attempts to identify and make a face the dominant element in the image. If there's more than one person, the one closest to the centre of the frame is the dominant one. One can also selectively turn on/off automatic red-eye reduction (pre-flash). The second button is for CCD shift image stabilization, which uses a Gyro-Sensor and an Image Stabilization Chip to automatically compensate for camera shake. Again, this is an on/off toggle.
On the back there is a small (maybe 12mm diagonal) but reasonably bright electronic viewfinder and a 2.7-inch, approx. 230,000 pixels, TFT colour LCD. There's an EVF/LCD button which is also a toggle, shifting the display from viewfinder to LCD and back. In EVF mode the display is the same as on the LCD, however when in EVF mode
everything is shown in the viewfinder, including the display of the image just taken. What would make more sense (at least to me) would be to be able to look through the EVF to make the image and have the result displayed on the LCD screen. Previewing a 12mm diagonal image isn't of much use to anyone. I'm sure this is something that could be corrected with a firmware update.
There's the usual menu wheel with a central button and four arrow keys, and each of these keys does double duty as well. At the top is the 'Delete' button, but it also allows one to select a number of different cropped image frames. I prefer to do my cropping in Lightroom so I've ignored that, but it might be of use to someone. On the right is the Forced Flash/ Slow Synchro Flash button, but this is disabled unless the flash is actually popped up.
On the bottom arrow is a menu of high-speed shooting modes and there are several options. One can make up to 15 - 2M images at about five frames/ second, up to 6 - 5M images at about two frames/ second, continuous images at about one frame/ second, etc.
On the left of the wheel is the Macro button. There are two Macro modes, normal and so-called Super Macro. In normal shooting mode the minimum focusing distances are 40 cm/1.3 ft. at wide angle, and1.5 m/4.9 ft. Having a 400mm lens that focuses down to five feet isn't bad. In Macro mode the focus range is 5 cm to 3 m (about 2 inches to 10 feet) at wide angle, and approx. 80 cm to 3 m (approx 2.6 to 10 feet). Now we have a 400 mm lens that focuses down to 2.6 feet, but finding your subject at that zoom level might be a challenge. In Super Macro mode one can focus down to about 1 cm, but this is only at wide angle; zoom is disabled. Pressing the macro button is a 3-way toggle: Normal-Macro-Super Macro-Normal again. Unfortunately, since Super Macro is only at wide angle, pressing this sequence will zoom the lens out from wherever it was set.
Bird's Foot Trefoil - macro mode
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Above the control wheel is the Playback button to the left for reviewing images, and an 'F' button to the right. The 'F' button gives the user a subset of the menu. In shooting mode for example, pressing the 'F' button provides options to change ISO, Image Quality (from 10M Fine to 0.3M) and Colour Mode. There are three Colour Modes - Standard, Chrome and B&W. I do B&W conversions in Lightroom so I don't use the last one. The difference between Standard and Chrome is somewhat akin to the difference between Provia and Velvia films. I find the Standard setting to be a little too flat, requiring about a 20% increase in Vibrance, but in Chrome mode people's skin for example looks really oversaturated.
Standard / Chrome
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Below the Control wheel, on the left is the Display/ Back button, and on the right is the Exposure button. There are four Display modes for shooting, from Normal to 'Menu Free' (image only), to a 6-square grid (handy for lining up horizons) to the current image and three previous images.
The Exposure button is a toggle as well, providing access to change not only exposure compensation (in 1/3 stop increments) using the left and right control arrows but also to change the aperture or shutter speed using the up and down control arrows, depending on shooting mode. While this button is pressed there is also a live histogram. However, when this button is depressed it locks out the other controls, including the Menu and 'F' buttons.
One thing I would like to suggest (again, this should be changeable using a firmware update), is that pressing the Menu button or the 'F' button should override the EVF/LCD button
and the Exposure button. If I'm looking through the viewfinder, and I have the Exposure Button set so I can see the histogram and change the aperture or shutter speed and I want to change something on the menu, I have to first press the EVF/LCD button to see the information on the LCD, and then I have to press the Exposure button to unlock the Menu. Then I press the Menu button to access the Menu. This is much harder than it has to be.
In the Shooting Menu there are a number of options, some of which I use and some not. The light meter has three options - multi, spot and average. White balance has seven options, including Auto and a Custom setting. One can choose between Continuous Focusing and Single AF, and in Single AF there are four options: Center, Multi, Tracking and Area. The camera doesn't have individual focus points as in a DSLR; in Area mode one can select one rectangle from a 7x7 grid covering the entire viewfinder and use this as the focus area.
There's no way to turn off in-camera Sharpening. There's only Hard, Standard and Soft, so I set it to Soft and leave it there. Finally, there is Flash compensation and Bracketing, both in 1/3 stop increments.
In Playback mode the 'F' button gives access to a Slideshow and direct from camera printing, neither of which I use.
The Playback menu offers several options as well. One can Erase one image, frame by frame, or all frames. The camera will try to remove Red-Eye after the fact, but I've not tried it.
Now, one thing that
really needs to be fixed on this camera is image rotation. There is no auto-rotation for vertical images - my six-year-old Canon could do that. It is possible to rotate an image through the Playback menu, but it takes four button presses for each image. There's just no excuse for that. Did the people at Fuji think nobody would make vertical images? Yes, it can be done in Lightroom's Library module by selecting each image in the grid that requires it and flipping them, but it shouldn't be necessary.
There is a menu option to protect one or all images, copy images to/from the camera memory and SD card, add a voice memo to an image, and it's possible to crop an image (from the center only, using the zoom toggle).
Pressing the Exposure button during playback brings up the histogram and the EXIF information. Pressing the Display button switches from normal, information free and image with a filmstrip at the bottom.
So, is this camera for you? I can't say that. For me, it offers a certain level of creative control in a relatively compact package, and it's something I can carry with me when I'm walking around town. Yesterday I took it out to a local wooded park. I went there feeling that I would be using it beyond what it was designed for, and that I would find it frustrating at times; I was right on both counts. For my wife it offers enough Automatic and Scene settings that she can get the images she wants. Image quality is good at lower ISOs. There are some things that need to be corrected, but overall, I like it.
Mike.
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ISO 100, 70.8mm lens 1/600 at f/5.0
100% crop
