I like shooting ISO ladders in well balanced light. You can see what the cameras will do when shot with my recommended settings inside a house with a window nearby passing a lot of daylight.
Of course, “a lot” is a real stretch … I have a large window in this room, but the exposures are still pretty slow … 3200 ISO is getting 1/15s from the F550 and 1/30s from the F770.
So first off … the F770’s aperture is faster at mid lengths because Fuji stretched the range without changing the max aperture. The crops were shot at f/5.7 for the 550 and at f/5.3 for the 770 with the same framing.
Second, the meter tends to create hot images. I centered the meter on all images and the F770 came out very slightly brighter and at slightly faster shutter speeds, moreseo than can be account for by the slight F-stop difference. Thus, Fuji appear to have made good on their claim of more efficient sensors in this generation.
The other change is that there is slightly less saturation on the F770, which may in part be due to subtle exposure differences. But the tonality looks about the same, so I am inclined to think that Fuji have yet again tweaked the saturation. The F80 was a high saturation camera, like the F550. The F770 is a lower saturation camera, like the F300 and the F70.
For what it’s worth …
So … the crops … 100% and straight out of the camera with no tweaking whatsoever. They did pass through ACR, but it applies no changes to JPEGs by default.
You will need to click through to see anything there. The file is 4900px wide and 1.4MB large. So beware …
The F770 will probably render reds better in the field because of the drop in saturation. And you can always bring that back up in post. I did just that in the following pair of images. These are 3200 ISO F770EXR images and both are full sized (you are welcome, Paul.) The second one has been processed in ACR7.
f770exr 3200iso f/5.3 1/30 manual mode M size dr400 pattern metering
Same file processed in ACR7 …
So far, I see nothing to complain about … once you get used to using exposure compensation with the F770. And some will prefer its slightly brighter and less saturaed appearance in JPEG.
But frankly … these compacts work best if you take some time to process the output, even the JPEG output, in LR or CS. Elements is also a good bet, although I’d be more inclined towards LR 4 for the small price difference.
And finally … for shxts and giggles, here is the 3200ISO image processed from RAF in ACR7. Also full sized. Warning … 2MB file.
The red response is just excellent in this sensor. And note the fine grain. This is why I prefer these cameras over the X10. Fuji should have made that a 16Mp camera in order to take advantage of finer grain. It’s files are just so clunky by comparison. And the sensor is huge compared with this one …
