Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR

Noise (9.62)

While shooting in standard 12-megapixel mode, the F200EXR has respectable noise levels up to ISO 800, but anything greater than that and the noise levels rapidly rise to unacceptable levels. Noise is a nasty static effect that significantly ramps up the higher the ISO setting. We shoot at two levels of studio illumination, one bright and one dim, at all full resolution ISOs, and analyze the noise levels using Imatest.

One of the tricks of the new sensor in the F200EXR is its ability is to combining pixels and shoot at six-megapixel resolution in an attempt to lower noise. This is done by putting the camera in EXR mode, and selecting SN Mode from the Menu, which offers high ISO and low noise. The sensor achieves this by combining the information from closely grouped pixels to create larger pseudo-pixels. While in this mode, the ISO maxes at 1600, where in other modes the maximum is 3200 (12MP), 6400 (6MP) and 12,800 (3MP).

We tested this mode against a few other shooting modes on the camera to try and get a feel if this potentially impressive new feature actually works. We shot our standard noise test at ISO 100, 400, 800 and 1600. We tested using 12-megapixel program mode, the EXR mode, 6-megapixel program mode, and we also ran the test on the 12-megapixel images resized to 6-megapixels using Photoshop.

Up to ISO 800, the advantage seems to lie in the standard 12-megapixel mode. However, above that the low-noise mode takes effect. What’s interesting is that shooting in 6-megapixels in Program Mode, and Low Noise EXR mode produce almost exactly the same results. According to Fujifilm, while in Program mode, the sensor is flexible, and based on the settings you have for dynamic range, image size and ISO, will use the EXR sensor mode. That being said, the difference between using the EXR mode and shooting at the full 12-megapixels is only 0.36% of noise, which isn’t a huge discrepancy. More on how we test noise.

We shoot this test under both bright light (3000 lux) and low light (60 lux) as some cameras tend to have worse noise under poor illumination. While there was a slight discrepancy at ISO 100, at levels above that there was almost no difference.

Compared to other cameras, the Fuji’s noise levels are very low at the ISO 100 to 800 range, but then rocket above every other camera after that. The table below shows the noise levels at four levels across the ISO range, for both 3000 and 60 lux.

Noise Comparisons
	ISO 80	ISO 400	ISO 800	ISO 3200
60 Lux
3000 Lux

ISO (7.00)

At full resolution, the F200EXR runs from ISO100-3200, up to 6400 at six-megapixels, and to 12,800 at three-megapixels. The chart below shows 100% crops from all the comparison cameras, at each ISO, which show how they handle under the different conditions. You can see that the noise levels on the Fuji are acceptable up to ISO 800, but rapidly degrade after that. Some sort of noise reduction software seems to be used as well, which is why the ISO 6400 and 12,800 images look as if they’ve had a palette knife taken to them. The images below are all taken at full resolution, except the F200EXR’s IS) 6400 and 12,800, which are at six-megapixels and three-megapixels respectively.

ISO Comparisons
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR	Canon PowerShot SD970 IS	Casio Exilim EX-FC100	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900
ISO Low
ISO 80	ISO 80	ISO 100	ISO 80
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR	Canon PowerShot SD970 IS	Casio Exilim EX-FC100	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900
ISO 200
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR	Canon PowerShot SD970 IS	Casio Exilim EX-FC100	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900
ISO 400
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR	Canon PowerShot SD970 IS	Casio Exilim EX-FC100	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900
ISO 800
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR	Canon PowerShot SD970 IS	Casio Exilim EX-FC100	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900
ISO 1600
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR	Canon PowerShot SD970 IS	Casio Exilim EX-FC100	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900
ISO 3200
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR	Canon PowerShot SD970 IS	Casio Exilim EX-FC100	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900
ISO 6400
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR	Canon PowerShot SD970 IS	Casio Exilim EX-FC100	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900
ISO 12800
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR	Canon PowerShot SD970 IS	Casio Exilim EX-FC100	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900

NOTE: The images above are not used in our testing or scoring, but are included here to show real-world examples of the differences between cameras at the various ISO settings.