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Rating: - Hands Down Best Compact On The Market
I am being very open and honest when I say this is the best compact on the market. Please note when I say this I am specifically refering to image quality. Things like looks, feel, menu layout, options, weight...ect are a mater of personal preference and who can judge that for you. I will admit I am not a professional photographer but I don't need to be to see which pictures are more pleasing to the eye. Isn't this what it is all about?

In short the Fuji F100 take beautiful, sharp colorful high resoloution pictures. I specifically compared it against Sony's DSC W170 & Canon's SD870 IS. The only reason I ever tried these other cameras is because I currently own a Fuji F31FD and wanted something with a real image stablizer. After reading all of the raving reviews I purchased the Sony DSC W170 and the Canon SD870 IS. I took various pictures with both cameras around my house on a sunny day,, inside and outside. To my suprise they were not even close to my Fuji F31FD or the Fuji F100FD. The descrepancy is such that it makes me wonder if Sony and Canon pay reviewers to give them great reviews. The reality is that the Fuji blows them both out of the water. Don't get me wrong, both Sony and Canon will take nice pictures outdoors, (Pictures on par with the Fuji) but as soon as you come inside the difference is day and night. The reason is very simple. Fuji cameras have a larger sensor that capture more light with less noise. This makes pictures taken indoors brighter and sharper with an overall look that is much, much more pleasing to the eye. Not to mention pictures taken indoors with Fuji never have the white spots that both the Cannon and Sony would have at random. This alone was a deal breaker. Since these spots are totally random you never know when your photo was going to be ruined by them. Never an issue with the Fuji! I realize most people think Sony and Canon's are great but it just make me think they don't really know the difference, or that they value something other than image quality about their cameras, hince giving them great reviews. Both the Canon Elps series and Sony DSC are very popular and are the cameras most people will buy, but remember in most cases the crowd is wrong and this is definatietly the case here. The Fuji takes excellent pictures outdoors and the best of any compact indoors. Don't let these so called professional reviews cost you a 15% restocking fee. Just go buy the Fuji and know none of the other compact even come close. Highly Recommended!

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Rating: - Eh.
I briefly owned the F50fd and made the mistake of buying this one, both cameras are equally bad - good thing I was able to return it. I've previously owned many ELPHS (now SD950) and a few DSLR cameras.

CONS
Design -- the flash gets in the way, camera looks and feels cheap, interface is not intuitive or polished, uses proprietary USB cable
IQ/AF -- Not great, noisy images at almost any ISO, camera is slow to AF and write
Did not work with my Transcend 150X 4GB SD card -- a card that has worked in every camera/reader (works fine with SD950) - this appears to be a known issue.
Battery life is terrible.

Don't have anything good to say about it, get a Canon SD950 if you're hungry for a high quality pocket 12MP camera, or get SD850 if you want to save some money.

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Rating: - Good replacement for F50fd
I had F40fd camera and them F50fd. F40 was better than F50, but just a little bit. Now I bought F100fd and very happy. It's much better than F40 and F50 (image quality, zoom, etc) and I'm almost sure this camera will serve me for years...

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Rating: - Much better than I initially expected
Let me say right off the bat that I'm an owner of a previous F-series camera, the F31fd. I love that camera but I wanted the image stabilization and the wider wide-angle, which the F31 doesn't have.

When I first opened the box and tried out a few dozen shots, I was disappointed. Using the F100 as I had used the F31, I thought the results weren't as good. I wasn't used to the new controls, I missed the Manual-Aperture-Shutter- priority and the top-mounted Mode dial. (By the way I haven't encountered the purple band issue.)

But after several weeks I've changed my mind. The lens is sharper, the zoom is greater (on both ends), the response is just as quick, and I'm finally accustomed to the new rotating 4-way control. I never use Scene Modes, but the new Portrait Enhancer is awesome.

If you're new to Fujifilm pocket cameras, you will LOVE the F100. If you're like me and you previously owned an F31, I say give the F100 a chance.

Hints for those who owned the F31:
* in bright contrasty daytime shots the F100 underexposes where the F31 overexposed. Use "Spot" metering in bright daylight on the F100 and your problems are solved.

* Sunny shots seem a touch more bluish on the F100 than the F31. Use "chrome" or even better, set White Balance to "shade". Works great.

* again in low-light shots, the F100 exposes more accurately where the F31 overexposed. Forget Exposure Compensation, use plain ole AUTO mode (yes!) on the F100, it works fine.

* Miss the Manual mode for very dim lighting? Use "Night" mode, it now works automatically all the way down to 4 or 8 full seconds.

* With the new 4-way control on the F100, does the Menu-within-a-Menu annoy you? Easy fix: just HOLD DOWN the OK button longer and you jump straight to the inner Menu. (This is not in the manual!)

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Rating: - Designed by committee
I bought this because I hoped it would be an upgrade from my favorite digital camera, the Fujifilm F30. Unfortunately, it is not better overall.

The F30, which is out of production, developed something of a cult following in techno-nurd circles because it had the incredible sensitivity of ISO 3200 with low noise (speckle). Fuji accomplished this with their "Super CCD" using hexagonally packed, larger sensors for greater fill factor and the ability to capture lower light intensities. (CCD photodiodes typically operate pretty close to the quantum limit of efficiency, so there is no possible improvement except by larger pixels.) The technology was brilliant but worked well only up to about 6 megapixels for the small chip size used in pocket cameras. Unfortunately Fuji's marketing people were not as imaginative as their semiconductor team and did not know how to persuade the buying public that dim light image quality is more valuable to the average photographer than pixel count - which it is. Caving in to the pixel race, later Fuji F cameras had more but smaller pixels, giving up the extreme low noise, low light capabilities. As a result used F30's sell at high prices on eBay.

Now comes the F100, which Fuji advertises as the pocket camera to end all pocket cameras, state of the art in every way, and which is supposed to extend the low light theme to 12MP, offering ISO 3200 for full resolution and up to an astounding ISO 12,800 with pixels reduced to 3MP.

So, how does it work? I've just spent the better part of a spring day comparing the F100 images directly with my F30 under various conditions.

Unfortunately, no, they did not manage to repeal the laws of physics. At ISO 3200, the 12MP F100 with its necessarily smaller pixels gives rougher images than my 6MP F30. And as for the ISO 12,800; forget it, it's a gimmick. The images are so rough as to be useless. This irritated me; borders on deceptive advertising.

The higher pixel count does stand up better to higher magnification or cropping. In good light where it is possible to use ISO 200, the F100 gives wonderful photos which can be cropped or blown up significantly more. But for the unique higher ISO range for which people look to Fuji, the F100 is actually a bit worse in image quality. Disappointing.

Otherwise, the F100 gives the impression of a pile of disconnected features There are worthwhile features in the F100 over the F30; one is the wide angle lens, the equivalent of 28mm, uncommon on pocket cameras; another is active image stabilization which allows slower shutters. Also F100 accepts SD memory cards whereas the F30 only took oddball proprietary xD's. In my tests however, the benefit of the Wide Dynamic Range feature seemed hard to discern. The battery seems to discharge pretty quickly. The nice aluminum case of the F30 has been replaced with Chinese plastic. (By the way, I read about a "pink banding" problem with the F100 but did not observe this.)

Otherwise, some of the annoyances of the F30 remain; a strange USB connector which won't work with your non-Fuji cables. The movie mode, for me one of the really cool features of a pocket camera, has not been improved at all; it is still not possible to zoom the lens while capturing a movie. The zoom itself is too hard to control, always overshooting one way or another - Hey guys, what would be wrong with a simple manual ring to zoom the lens?

Most Japanese cameras and all Fujifilm cameras including this one are marred by byzantine, obscure, hard to remember menu systems, packed with a plethora of "scene modes" certain to be ignored by the type of user who would buy an advanced digicam in the first place. They serve no purpose except to clutter things up. The other day in a store I saw a digicam that boasted of "Fifty Scene Modes!" Fifty?? Hey folks, what happened to the idea of a POINT AND SHOOT camera??

Overall, I admire Fujifilm which is one of the world's premier imaging technology companies. But as with many large corporations, its products are designed by uneven committees; brilliant CCD people, me-too market people, and an interface team who muck things up based on false assumptions. Companies which produce really great products, like Apple, do so because one person with excellent design sense governs the whole development.

Bottom line: I was disappointed because the F100 was not a clear advance over my two year old F30. It does have a nice wide angle lens, and if you don't mind the high price you may love it. In good light the photos are superb. But overall it does not give the sense of a well integrated product. Once the dim light capabilities are compromised, the F100 is just another camera which competes with many others.