Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Fuji Announces F80EXR

Well … my F70EXR just became obsolete. I’ve owned it for 6 months and I bought it the day it came out. Thanks Fuji.
The new cam looks interesting … several notable changes from what I have read:
  • The resolution has been bumped from 10mp to 12mp
  • The video resolution is finally HD
  • The LCD screen is 3” instead of 2.7”
The question is whether any of these are really an improvement? A quick analysis of each change:

Resolution

So they added some pixels … the question is why? The answer is “to appear to be moving forward” … and what is the net effect? Well, it is bad of course. Because they did not change the sensor size. The sensor remains at 1/2”, which means that they made the pixels smaller. And they were already really tiny. Since the net effect is a requirement for more noise reduction, and the resolution difference from 10mp to 12mp amounts to diddly, this may prove to be a mistake. The cam had a tolerable amount of NR before … will the new one still be tolerable?

Video Resolution

This sounds wonderful. But the F70EXR’s video was not all that weak. It’s *audio* was the problem, and they do not appear to have addressed that issue. And the HD format *did not* include the new and much more efficient AVCHD codec. So they will suck up a lot of memory storing these huge videos with motion jpeg. (Anyone who shoots the ZS3 sees the difference and it is not pretty.)

LCD

Woopee. 0.3” bigger. I guess you gotta look like you are moving forward.

I did forget a couple of important new features … there are two new scene modes – cat and dog. And I am not kidding. The software team has some of the worst firmware on the planet, but they spent their time detecting cats and dogs.

Anyway … the resolution bump may very well serve to weaken the image quality without really providing anything of value … the HD is welcome, but not without improvements in the audio (anyone who shoots the ZS3 knows how important that issue is) … and the rest is fluff.

Thanks again Fuji …