I already blogged on this topic, and my conclusion from a review of Fuji’s own sample images was that the image quality was pretty poor. The cam is still stunningly popular on the Fuji forum at DPReview, but in some ways that’s just because so few people have them. ;-)
Some people are supporting the camera quite heavily, but of those, only a few actually have one and at least one is a rather vocal incompetent … oh well, nothing has really changed since I left on that score.
So the real point of this post is that there is an excellent summary of the sorts of issues you will run into if you buy this camera - written by one of the first owners, who has now sent the camera back.
Fuji’s choice to adopt Sony’s BiCMOS sensor was probably a financial one … and my guess is that they’ll sell a bucket of these cams, at least in relative terms. Relative to their normal lackluster sales.
But, at the same time, they did little to stem the serious image quality issues of that sensor, noticed by many people way back last summer. I blogged some of those right here. And now we see the same sensor in Fuji’s new flagship bridge camera. *shudder*
Fuji are going to rapidly lose their place in the hearts of enthusiasts if they don’t at least prioritize image quality and Fuji colors, their traditional strengths. Usability would be nice too … at least where write speeds for RAW images are concerned. They went from pretty good in the Sx00 series of cams to pretty awful in this cam. And on and on … AA batteries … WTF were they thinking?
Anyway, read it all here.
