I have put up a set of trial photos with my new Fujifilm F45fd -

http://fujif45fd.needsabeach.com/

Kelly

Dial-up users-BEWARE if you click on the thumbnails.

Looks good Kelly

You're absolutely right Capn. Took me most of last night to upload those 8Mp shots to my website over my dumb dialup. Deliberately kept those shots the full 8Mp size for the benefit of shoppers asking how good a sub-$200 8Mp point-and-shoot can do.

Kelly

Is that a fountain in a swimming pool shot?

No, that fountain is just a decorative feature in a courtyard -

<< caution: linky to 3.8 Mb photo >>

With hindsight, I should have used my flash for fill in that shot.

Or wussit another fountain?

Kelly

Are some of those pictures at the home of the Fighting Artichokes, SCC?

Nice shots Kelly.

Enjoy your new camera!

The campus shots toward the bottom of that page were taken at the WEST campus of the Arizona State University (main campus is in Tempe). -

http://asu.edu/tour/west/

Thanks LB. Had I been looking for a simple compact, the choice would have been a lot tougher. But this time I wanted a slimline case design. I also tried a Sony S750, but it refused to make a USB connection with my Win2000 box. This is my first Fuji, so bit of an experiment. As a semi-advanced slimline job for under $200 this Fuji is a very strong choice.

Kelly

Nice shots, but except for #2, I think the Fuji got the exposure correct at <0>. They look pretty bright, but there are a lot of bright and shadow areas; trees and bright concrete are tough to do in the same frame.

Fuji has a new "bridge" camera out that in some aspects rivals the results you can get from a DSLR, it's called the Fuji S100FS. Review here



But at over $700, it is actually more expensive than my E-510

The EV correction is a personal call. Blocked in shadows bug me more than blown highlights. So I like my shots a little lighter than the salon crowd. When they get around to paying me for shooting, then I will do it their way <sarcasm>.

Those highend fixed lens SLRs are cool. Love that you get the old style lens barrel collar back as a control. Wish they would give up on the dumb azz retracting lenses and bring this feature down to the cheap seats.

Kelly

How about more suggestions of photos to look at?

I'm not sure about what you meant seabuddy?

As for this camera, what is posted on that web page is about all I have. Just bought the camera.

A few of the online camera review sites show what amount to lab test photos. One example -

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/FPZ5/FPZ5A7.HTM

Such technical photos try to examine the quality that the camera can produce, under different settings.

Much more common are galleries of sample photos, example -

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2007_reviews/stylus820_samples.html

Seen in the thumbnail size, all these tell you are exposure, saturation, and white balance. To check resolution you need to download the full size image. Of course it's the photographer who determines how attractive a photo is, not the camera. So there is a very real risk that a shopper will sway his choice based simply on a pretty picture. Even so, this seems to be a popular way of picking cameras.

One of the big photo hosting sites provides for searching their vast collection by camera brand and model!

http://www.flickr.com/cameras/

The trouble with this is that there is every chance the photo has had some corrections with an editor. You may not be seeing the raw output of the camera.

Or something like that ....
Kelly

Well, I liked the opening page for this one...

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/FPZ5/FPZ5A7.HTM

There are several sites for camera reviews. Imaging-Resource is arguably the most thorough of all of them. However, no one site gets around to testing every camera on the market. So you have to hunt around and end up using various sites. A good site for doing that hunting for you is this one -

http://www.dcviews.com/cameras.htm

Kelly

Sample shots to compare 4 interesting ultracompacts -

f40fd vs sd790 vs sd950 vs w300

"f40fd" is a Fujifilm, no longer a current model
"sd790" and "sd950" are both by Canon
"w300" is a new Sony

Kelly

The Fuju and the Sony both looked too saturated for my taste. The Fuji looked like it had a slight red push.

The Sony was a little sharper than the Canon SD760

Both Canon model colors looked more natural to me, with the SD 950 resolution the sharpest of the two Canons and sharpes of all IMO.

If I were buying based on those shots (not considering prices), my order would be SD 950, then SD 760, then the Fuju, then the Sony.

The Fuji and the SD 760 would be a debate on color (over) saturation vs sharpness. (I prefer color accuracy myself, too much color especially red is annoying)

My pet fetish is corner sharpness. All zoom lenses can expect to have softened corners to some degree. I'm happy to see the Fuji held its own here! Biggest disappointment was the Canon SD950. Wish that he had also included an Olympus and a couple of Panasonics. Oh well.

Kelly

All in all, in persepective, those were respectable shots from cameras not much larger than a deck of cards...

Oh I agree. For sharing images on the Internet or for the new digital "frames" these cameras are, if anything, overkill.

On the camera forums the most common complaint is about how long the shutter lag is, not the image quality. I haven't had a chance to use a DSLR, but apparently they have a much shorter shutter lag.

Kelly

I have now expanded the sample photo collection for my Fuji F45fd with a bunch of new shots -

http://fujif45fd.needsabeach.com/

(If you've already bookmarked this, no need to redo, same URL)

Kelly

I already gave the link for the Flickr camera page here. Just found out that Pbase has the same deal -

http://www.pbase.com/cameras

Kelly