Editorial Review:Product Description:Equipped with the latest high-speed infrared connectivity, F100fd lets you send photos to another IrSimple camera or device in seconds without the need for a cable or PC. FinePix Wide Dynamic Range gives you the ability to explore extreme scenes and capture all the nuances of brightness and tonality. Using an aspherical lens to efficiently collect light at the focal point, the lens can deliver high-performance and phenomenal clarity of image with only a few lens elements for a more compact engineering experience. 12-Megapixels are arranged in Fuji Film's unique honeycomb pattern, which maintains high pixel numbers and enhances the light collection efficiency and light capture efficiency per pixel. Dual IS uses FinePix high sensitivity to freeze the movement of subjects and defeat motion blur, while CCD Shift Image Stabilization automatically compensates for camera shake. View and select up to 100 photos at a time in a 10x10 array of micro thumbnails. With the high resolution LCD, it is so easy to scan the micro images and find the photos you want to share with friends and family. Take the new Wheel Dial interface for a spin. Navigating modes, positions and functions has never been easier or more intuitive. With each selection, a helpful explanation of the mode or position appears on the display. It can display full-resolution photos on the LCD at a speed of 10fps. 1/1.6 Super CCD HR Sensor File Format - JPEG (EXIF Ver 2.2) Aperture - F3.3 - F9.0 (Wide) / F5.1 - F11.0 (Telephoto) Shutter Speed - 8 seconds to 1/1500 second Self-timer - 10 seconds and 2 seconds delay IR Communication IrSimple IrSS for Wireless Communication Shooting Modes - Auto, Natural Light, Natural Light & with Flash, M (Manual), Movie Portrait, Portrait Enhancer, Landscape, Sport, Night, Fireworks, Sunset, Snow, Beach, Underwater, Museum, Party, Flower, and Text Dimensions - Width 3.8 x Height 2.3 x Depth 0.9 (97.7x58.9x23.4mm
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Customer Reviews
Average 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.
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...
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!)
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.
Rating: -
Pro photographer loves it
I'm a professional photographer and I've owned a Fuji F10, F30, F50 and now the F100. The F50 was the only dog of that group. The F100 I feel has just as good low-light performance as my beloved F30 but with twice the resolution. You can look at my blog at http://rickleephoto.blogspot.com and click on the "Produce" tag and see that weeks #122 and up are shot with the F100 at ISO800. The color and sharpness are stunning. With the F30, I always had the camera set on minus 1/3 or 2/3 stops to avoid overexposure. I think that problem is solved on the F100. I love the extra wide-angle we have now. That really extends the usefulness of the camera.
As for the pink banding problem... I really don't want to start calling people names, but honestly, I've always found that there will be a group of people who approach photography from an "engineering" standpoint rather than an artistic one. We need the technical nerds to do tests and such, but I've never seen this problem show up in a real-world photo. I've seen a lot of stunning photos by some good photographers done with this camera and none of them suffered because of this problem.
