F300EXR – Review Part 3 – Some random shots from the first day …

I did not post everything I shot on the first day, interrupting that flow in the middle of last night to shoot and post the high ISO test in rotten light. The F300 did an acceptable job there, but we saw the F70’s sensor again take the checkered flag. Frustrating, considering how easy it would be for Fuji to get clever and market a version of the F300 with the F70 sensor in it … offering an extended resolution mode where the F70 output is merely upsized to 12mp … heck, with this trick they could go up to 14mp if they resized before they sharpened and they would beat the absolute pants off of the competition …

Anyway … back to the first day shots. I captured some images in the deep woods where I was forced to use very high ISO just to get a decent shutter speed … these were to be hand held at full zoom. The high ISO images in good light at full zoom are quite a bit better than the low light high ISO shots in bad light … this I attribute to the lack of need for Fuji’s selective noise reduction, which leaves the details mostly intact.

Let’s have a look … and remember that these are generally processed images. I will tell you when they are straight from the cam.

First, I fel like trying the flash out. I stood in a dark area looking at a leaf that was back lit by a very bright area. I should have captured that image, I regret not doing it. The leaves were basically black. So I switched flash on to slow sync and shot an image with a typical exposure of –0.33EV … the image looks good, but the background is blown … I did use ACR to recapture as much as I could, but there really was no way to get it all back with such a bright exposure. Here is that image.

Remember to click through :-) … I find this image quite appealing. The leaf is *wicked* sharp! As shown here in crop:

And do note that the top right corner, with the leaves fairly close to the focal plane, is not a disaster. It looks quite acceptable …

I thought I’d then thry to preserve the background by dropping exposure dramatically. So I shot –1.67EV! That’s al;most 2 stops underexposed. Obviously, I was forced to open the shadows in ACR quite a bit, but the background was saved. The leaves were again perfectly exposed by the flash, but here we see that the first shot looks better because there is more contrast with the subject … i.e. sometimes a high key presentatiopn can work for you …

The other very noctieable issue with this image is that it is back-focued. The leaves above and behind the main subject leaf are in perfect focus and the subject is a bit blurred. It is not blindingly obvious after processing, but it is there. I find that the new fancy AF algorithm does make mistakes sometimes. No more often than the other EXR cams, but one would have hoped for much better accuracy with phase detect.

I then pointed the camera skywards, since the 24mm field of view should look pretty impressive.

That’s not bad at all. The top right corner is again tolerable, unlike the first shot I posted. I am somewhat pleased. However, there is quite a bit of CA showing (it’s a classic image for that) so I thought I would take a shot at that with ACR.

Yes, I find that slightly better. Which one you prefer is a matter of taste.

While looking at the canopy of these woods, I spotted a group of leaves being blasted by the sun. I thought the F300 might do that some justice in DR400 mode, so I shot it. It’s a pretty image, although I decided to add some vignette to really emphasize the subject leaves.

Next I turned my attention back to the floor of the woods themselves … I shot a long distance image on my tripod head at full zoom, which required 1600 ISO to get a decent shutter speed and avoid blur … 1/80s is two stops under what is normally needed at 360mm …

It’s not a bad result. The background is a bit grainy, but they definitely work hard on smoothing that out with the NR algorithms on this cam. Works ok …

Here are some crops for you to see that the details are not too bad for 1600 ISO … remembering again that this is the 1/2” sensor with too many pixels on it :-)

Then a hand-held close-up of some bark. Lovely tree … also required 1600 ISO …

The floor under the tree was covered with the pretty little plants and one dead leaf … also 1600 iso …

A long zoom shot follows … an area of dappled sunlight and dark woods makes for a near impossible image … 800 ISO …

I turned my attention to a farm across the highway from these woods … the tower shown here was back-lit so I boosted compensation to +2/3EV and ended up opening shadows even a bit more. The cam chose 100 ISO for this one …

 

I removed some CA from the top two wires in the deep corner of that shot … many would  not even have noticed it …

Back to the floor of the woods … 800 ISO again fighting dappled sunlight …

Back out the focal length a bot and you get 400 ISO at –1EV …

 

My son woke up a bit later and we decided to catch breakfast at our local establishment … I’ve shot images here before. We were seated near some big windows and I decided to shoot a few images for fun.

A fairly classic macro image … I like the tones. This is straight from the cam at 400 ISO … only resized and output sharpened.

My son refused to be photographed that day … but you can see the colors as we mix the daylight from behind me with the lights on the ceiling … note that the lights are not burnt out.

I shot a girl from 15 feet away past the should of my son and the girl sitting behind him … the image turned out decently for 800 ISO …

Now, what would I do with it if trying to process it as a portrait? And a free crop for you …

Out in the parking lot, some gulls about 50 feet away … cropped … –2/3EV …

Shopping cart through my windshield …

When we arrived home, I shot some images in deep shade on my front lawn, which is extra long after traveling and then being busy several weekends in a row …

Full zoom on this cam works really well I find …

Could not hold the highlights on this stem of a Hosta … but the leaf is very sharp at 800 ISO …

A dying Ostrich Fern at 400 ISO …

A neighbor’s house across the street … long way away shows the massive reach … this is straight from the cam …

As others who have had the cam for a while can attest … this thing is fun to shoot. The results are very nice in decent light … and even the 1600ISO shots in the woods are pretty good.