F70EXR -- day time faceoff with F11, G10

Still liking the cam ... but it showed me another strange weakness today. A real glitch in the metering system. I must admit that I had been looking in the menus for the compensation control and could not find it, today I realized that it is on the top position on the ring control. And I had left it on +1/3ev for who knows how long ...

Anyway ... I stopped on the back from lunch to whip off a few images to compare the day time performance of these three and the F70EXR suffered a bit for the comparison.

First, when setting + or - compensation in an EXR mode, the camera actually gives a hot exposure. But when setting 0 compensation in 800% mode, it works much better. Examples ...

The hot exposure:


Way too hot ... and you get that with both +1/3 and -1/3 compensation. I was able to save it in ACR, but dang ...


I discovered this later in photoshop when I found this image, similar metering and shot at +/-0ev ... the only one ...


Straight from the cam, that's a far better image.

The G10 does it perfectly ...


And so does the F11 ...


Shows that simple and straightforward still works ... and works really well ...

The overexposure gave me fits for other images too ...

Here's a shot of the power line. The F70EXR gave me a strange gradient in the sky, although the actual tower looks pretty nice ...


The F11 struggled to give me the whole thing, as it is the cam without 28mm ...


But the sky is better ... as it is in this shot from the G10.


So one has to be fairly careful when shooting the F70EXR in the special 800% DR priority mode ... it seems to be easy to provoke it to over expose and wreck the skies a bit ...

The final comparison shows just how much reach this cam has, and it looks pretty nice here ...


The F11 has the perfect amount of zoom to frame the shot ...


And the G10 a bit more but still works in portrait ...


Remember to click on the images to see the much crisper 800px versions.

So for landscapes, the cam can be finicky ... I suppose I'll have to test it again with mode settings. The 800% DR setting is certainly finicky and the meter is twitchy, to say the least. In fact, I believe that it is more accurate to say that it is broken. That's what comes from building in massive tables of feature interactions (three full pages in the manual) ... you just cannot predict the behavior when someone sets one you did not think about ...

Shame on you Fuji ... just make it work ...

F70EXR -- fights it out with F11, G10

The battle of the giants ... The F11 remains one of Fuji's better compacts, quality high ISO and a light touch with NR to promote processing of the output. The G10 of course has already achieved legendary status for its incredible low ISO performance and resolution. It has the best controls of any compact camera, ever. Better than many entry dSLRs and bridge cams as well ...

But, how do they fare when compared in macro mode? The F70EXR has this peculiar scene mode called "text" that made me wonder if it worked better than, say, pro low light mode in macro.

So I shot some images with each camera and processed some interesting crops. One set of images of a piece of paper shot at an angle, and one set of crops of my TN panel. The result is that the F70EXR has the worst magnification (Fuji ... what were you thinking?) but does hold its own (barely) on image quality at high ISO.

Note: The F70EXR images are all shot at 5mp. The F11 images are 6mp. And the G10 images are a spectacular 14.7mp!



The G10 is clearly the one to beat ... much higher magnification because of its resolution and extreme close focusing ... but the F70 does alright. I posted the "screw" image and a "thistle" image in another blog entry earlier today showing that macro mode is perfectly usable for closeups ....

I also shot a few images at 800, 1600 and 3200 ISOs in moderate light ... filtered through horizontal blinds that were closed ... and I shot in manual mode so I had a lot of under exposures and one slight over exposure.

What I conclude from the following crops is that 3200ISO is actually usable when the exposure is nailed. And when the exposure is screwed up, results are simply awful ... this is something we all need to keep in mind when looking at suspect tests ... was care taken to nail the exposure?

Mallory at a Crombie McNeill Workshop at the Mill of Kintail

Finally, the last installment of the Mill of Kintail workshop. I encountered Mallory twice at the Pakenham bridge. I did not work with her at all at Kintail itself. Not sure why ...

The first encounter came after I'd finished shooting Sam and the Stella in the water. I wandered away from the bridge because I saw a couple of groups working with individual models in the reeds and on the shore.

I cam upon Mallory with a couple of other fellows, whose names escape me right now. One of them was using a light stand carrying a round reflector with diffuser on it and a large battery pack. Serious stuff. I hope to see his work at the review this coming Thursday.

Anyway, Mallory was posing in the reeds and I managed a few interesting shots. It was not my setup, so I tried to intrude very little on what she was doing for the other guys, but I did ask her now and again to tilt her chin down to open some space below her irises. I'm very much into getting the eyes right, and hers are lovely.

This first pair of shots is the result of exactly that request. The eyes needed no retouching, she has bright whites in there without any help. In fact, the light here was astounding, as I hardly had to adjust anything ... just some skin softening, a bit of targeted local contrast for lips and lashes and iris and that's about it.



I did ask her at one point to pose in a cat like position in the reeds. I was looking for a more interesting version of the Anik image I shot way back at the Aylmer workshop in June. The result screamed for black and white and I am most pleased at how this turned out. It would look great in a poster sized print.


I went one to shoot a bit of Rebecca on the shore line before wandering back to the waterfall area, where Mallory was in the water and posing. This proved very fruitful.


The smile was a real bonus, as it was genuine ... not for the cameras.


The following image got stuck in no man's land ... the light is not great in this area, so I vacillated between color and black and white and finally settled on black and white. But I don't really know if it works ...


The water was not exactly warm, and I caught a nice pose where she is reacting to a chill ...


She came back like a trooper and reeled off some very nice poses. I like this relaxed image of her leaning on the top of the fall.


This one is even better ...


And my favorite ... which again seemed to scream for a black and white treatment ...


Note the Zoolander / Jolie lip pucker ... she does this *really* well ...

And one final sweet smile to close the show ...


Kintail was a really nice shoot. The water work was great ... I love the movement you can get from flowing water. Were I shooting the setting under pressure of delivery, I'd instruct the models to hold really still for each pose while I shot at low speeds. With the high magnification of the LCD on the D300, it is easy to confirm perfect sharpness.

So that's it.

F70EXR -- Mixed Bag of Samples and Tests

After yesterday's crushing realization that Fuji have ignored their inadequate microphone for 4 years, I have rallied to consider the fact that the camera's reach and rather nice high ISO makes it an astoundingly good still image concert camera. So I turned my attention to testing the lense at the extremes ... how sharp is this thing?

I started with a couple of shots at the workstation ... one of the blinds and one of the USB switcher I use (if you have not tried one of the better ones, you are in for a treat.)

I shot the blinds at 270mm from about 10-12 feet away ... I was careful to align the plane of focus to avoid a false blur at the corners from a tilt.


That's not too bad, although 3200iso does have a softening affect. Remember that I load everything through ACR, so I apply a bit of sharpening and sometimes I apply some NR. Not for this one though, this was Neat Image.

The next image is at 1600 ISO and also had Neat Image applied to it, although it probably did not need it at web size.


The cam is pretty sharp, even at what should be considered very high ISO for a 1/2" sensor. I then had to go and feed the young one ... so I fired up the barbie and grabbed an old tripod to shoot some images in the yard.

I shot across the pool to the garden, where I have a Purple Ninebark under seige by some sort of weed vine that has plagued by yard for years now. It self seeds so I have it every year. Anyway, I shot that bush from about 20-25 feet from tripod with stabilization on.

This is 100iso at sunset.


And then I put in the center and corner crops to illustrate the sharpness of the lens ... I find it perfectly adequate for my needs.


So, of course, I turned my attention to the moon. What better test than shooting something 256000 miles away?


Remember to click on the images to see the 800 pixel versions. Not the best moon shot I have, but definitely not the worst either.

While cooking the Souvlaki Pork Kabobs I puttered about the garden and came away with a few shots that were interesting, in that ther are shot at high ISO after sunset and processed *without* noise reduction ....



This next one was shot in pro low light mode ... and it worked very well. Grain free at 1600iso ...


So the cam continues to impress ... mostly. High ISO on this thing is way beyond where it should be with the sensor size. Very, very smooth ...

Ah Fuji .... you still have not fixed the audio on your digicams ... F70EXR sucks as concert recording cam ...

Wow ... am I ever disappointed ... the F70EXR was looking like the perfect concert cam, until I tested it with real bass in my car ... the kind that wakes the neighbors I mean ...

And it has problems very similar to the F11 ... what an annoying discovery ...

Now I have a decision to make ... since the G10 found its way home for now, I can just take the F70EXR back and call it a day ... but then what? All the other brands are going to do a better job of video recording (duh) ... but none will be as good at still images. This totally sucks ...

Perhaps trading up to the G11 is the answer ... just live with the loss of resolution and the size of the beast ... *sigh* ...

Anyway ... here's the test ... the worst is at the end, but you might find some of the songs amusing for various reasons ... (Has Been comes to mind :-)

F70EXR -- Sample Shots, Pro Low Light, Pro Focus

I had the F70EXR along this evening to retrieve the G10 from its new / old owner. I will be putting it up for sale I suppose .... maybe fredmiranda.com ...

Anyway, I took the youngest off to the Mandarin Court, a restaurant that I've been going to for nearly 30 years. While we were chatting, waiting to eat, and eating I couldn't help but fool around with this cam.

I was able to finally shoot using pro focus mode. It seems to like to underexpose quite a bit. Not sure why. I had to go black and white on it because of the damage done by the under exposure.


It also left all sorts of weird smears on the face. All in all, I still think this is a bright light feature with people. On the other hand, with inanimate objects, it works pretty well. Here are two shots in a row, one without and one with pro focus mode.



By the way, those are all 800 ISO and they are quite clean.

I thought I'd see if pro low light mode would work on him, and these two attempts pretty much answer the question on compatibility with humans ...



As in not very ....

Both of those are 1600 ISO ... so the cam chooses a lower ISO for pro focus mode and a higher one for pro low light mode. Makes sense I suppose ... faster shutter speeds improve the odds of a clean meld of 4 images.

Again, with inanimate objects, I had much better luck ... all four at 1600 ISO and I felt no need whatsoever to use Neat Image ...





That last one ... foreground is Diced Chicken Hunan and Background is Shredded Chicken in Garlic Sauce ... neither is on the menu any more, but they still make them for old timers ...

When I shoot at wide angle into the restaurant proper (this is one of two rooms), it chooses 800 ISO and again there is no need whatsoever for Neat Image. I must say that I am quite pleased at the high ISO performance. It is not bad at all ... weird modes aside :-)


I finished this farting around with a try at the super intelligent flash. I love a pretentious name as much as the next guy ... but surely they did not need to add super to iFlash just for marketing points ...


This shot works fine for a snap ... but the mixed colors (auto white balance must match to the flash, which is daylight equivalent) make for a mess. So this sort of image is pretty much forced into a black and white treatment.


That's a bit better ... and, as with all Fujis since the F10, the F70EXR chooses 800 ISO. But the images are so very clean ...

The final image is a close up shot at 800 and the hair texture is excellent.


There is no doubt left in my mind now ... this thing is a keeper ... pending the final video / audio tests of course.