Fujifilm FinePix F100fd First Impressions Review

Viewfinder
The Fujifilm F100fd does not have an optical viewfinder, but uses the LCD screen instead. The 2.7-inch LCD has 100 percent coverage of the recorded image, making it a much better choice than most optical viewfinders, anyway.

The refresh rate on the LCD can be changed through the power management portion of the FinePix menu. The default power saving view looks a little choppy and easily blurs moving subjects. The "clear display" option is just what it says it is; the refresh rate speeds up to 60 fps instead of 30 fps, which provides a smoother view of action. In this mode, the display even brightens a little more.

The display info on the screen can be changed with the left half of the button in the bottom right corner of the back. It can leave a blank screen or show file info or file info with a framing assist grid.

Overall, the LCD as a viewfinder looks great as long as the clear display feature is chosen in the F-menu.

LCD Screen
The Fuji F100fd has the same 2.7-inch LCD as its predecessor. They both have 230,000 pixels. The amorphous silicon TFT LCD has an anti-glare coating, but seems to attract exorbitant amounts of grease. Since the coating doesn’t work on grease, fingerprints reflected the lights from above and made it harder to see the image on the screen.

The LCD can be viewed at wide angles when held below and to the sides of the head. When it is held above, though, you can’t see anything. Forget about seeing the image when you hold the camera above the crowd to snap a picture of the president walking by. As one Fujifilm booth rep put it, "It’s not perfect, but it’s very usable."

There is an 11-level brightness adjustment in the setup menu that makes the F100fd’s LCD more versatile. Overall, the LCD is nicely sized and has great resolution.

Flash
The flash on the Fujifilm F100fd is positioned to the left of the lens, when viewing from the front. It is small but not thin. From casual shooting on the show floor, this didn’t lead to any noticeable unevenness in the flash range, but we'll wait until we get it back into the lab to draw any real conclusions on this.

The flash modes are fairly simple: Auto, On, Off, and Slow Sync. All of the modes have red-eye reduction. It seemed to work, as none of the portraits I took had red eyes in them, but again we'll have to wait and see how well it does in our test lab before drawing any firm conclusions.

Like previous F-series cameras, there is a dual flash mode called Natural Light & With Flash. The first picture it takes is done with a higher ISO sensitivity and no flash. The latter image is taken using the flash.

The F100fd’s flash doesn’t recover quickly. After taking a picture with the flash forced on, the camera took about five seconds to take its next flashed shot. This isn’t impressive but this could change by the time the production model comes out in March. Overall, this flash produced nice even lighting and didn’t overexpose any portraits.

Zoom Lens
This is the biggest change on the F100fd from its predecessor. The older model has only a 3x optical zoom lens, but the new model shows off a Fujinon 5x optical zoom lens. The longer lens is a welcome change. A 3x lens doesn’t feel like much zoom at all when in a back row at a concert. The 5x lens has a nice 6.4-32mm zoom range that is equivalent to 28-140mm in the traditional 35mm format. This provides a wide enough view to capture group portraits and architectural shots, but is long enough to get properly cropped action shots, too.

The lens is controlled by a zoom ring that surrounds the shutter release button. It stops at about 14 focal lengths throughout the zoom range and moves smoothly when zooming in but backfires when zooming out. The backfiring looks like the camera can’t decide where to settle down at, so it zooms out and in and out again before becoming motionless.

The zoom lens is complemented nicely by a dual image stabilization system that combines the conventional digital image stabilization technology (which boosts the ISO and shutter speed) with Fujifilm’s newer sensor-shift stabilization system, which moves the sensor in response to camera shake. This is especially nice to have because bumps are otherwise accentuated in images and videos taken with the long 5x lens. The system can be activated with a push to the top of the multi-selector.

Of note is the 8.2x digital zoom, but it should be avoided to preserve image quality.