Customer Reviews

Fujifilm Finepix F10 6.3MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Finally this camera repreents a major move for Fuji. After years of trying to hype up interest in their cameras with SuperCCD claims of 12 MPs etc But falling completely short with excess noise, Fuji has come out with a decent camera this time. This camera compares very well to the 7MP cameras like the Canon SD500 and the Sony P200 and in some cases even better results than the Nikon Coolpix 7900, Sony 150. I think its closest competitor is the Casio Exilim EX-Z750 which although priced slightly higher than the Fuji has some really compelling features.

Here are the PROS

1) It has a nice sturdy metal body, although not as sleek as and thicker than the Canon SD line.

2) Low noise although has purple fringing on some pictures.

3) Low light: Actually usable ISO 1600 setting. In some cases this eliminates the need for the the image stablization.

4) Very good battery life. Fuji says 500 pictures per charge...really good for this small camera.

5) Priced very well. Blows away pricing as compared to the 7 MP cameras which it compares to very well. For example the Canon SD500 is about $175 higher or about 50% MORE than the Fuji F10 with rebate. It is up to you to justify whether the SD500 takes 50% better pictures than the Fuji. I dont think so. In the SD500' defense it does look and feel better than the Fuji and uses the cheap SD cards.

6) Finally a good movie mode (at 640 x 480 and very crisp 30 fps)


Here are the CONS

1) Uses those pesky xD cards which are harder to find, more expensive and smaller capacities than the SD cards.

2) No optical viewfinder. This will come back to haunt you in bright sunlight when the LCD gets completely washed out.

3) Really stupid design flaw of the use of the dock/adapter for any of the ports, including USB, A/V out, or Power. You just have to remember to carry the dock/adaptor with you at all times.

4) Hard to use menu system. Canon and Sony totally blow away this camera is ease of use menu system

5) Slim to None manual controls but you are buying this camera for its point and shoot capabilities and not manual controls.. right !!

this camera is plain simply awesome. when i finally ran out of battery, i realized i had been using the thing for a FULL WEEK without recharging. the battery life is amazing. and so is the speed. the camera is on with zero delay, it focuses instantaneously, there's virtually no shutter lag. the menus need some getting used to if you come from other brands, but ultimately they're well laid out. the image quality is excellent. iso 80 thru 200 images are virtually noise free. the camera allows you to push the sensitivity all the way up to iso 1600. this means, no flash for interior shots, evening outdoor shots where flash wouldn't reach far enough anyway, all with no shake and very low noise. there is plain simply no other compact digicam out there that can do that. others give up at iso 400, the f10 easily goes up to 800. iso 1600 pix are a bit noisy, but still usable.

the only thing the camera is lacking is more manual controls. if you want shutter or aperture priority, you'll have to seek elsewhere. however, there is exposure correction and manual white balance controls.

this camera is a milestone. it's worth the money.

I've just replaced my Sony DSC-W1 camera with the Fuji F10. All that time, I thought my Sony delivered good picture quality; well, compared to the Fuji it is nowhere close.
Based on dcresource and dpreview Web Sites, I decided to purchase that Fuji F10. The pictures it takes are simply truly amazing: colors, accuracy, full of life. For the first time ever, people are actually saying "wow, this picture of me with your baby is great, could you e-mail it to me?". The flash is so powerful, that I'd recommend turning down the ISO (you can actually switch to post-shot mode and take the same pic three times and compare them live). Movies are great (compatible with Windows and Mac, even iMovie). The so-called 'terminal' (very tiny connection box used for A/V, USB and charge) is not annoying, though a cradle would have been better.
The menu navigations are clumsier than Sony, Canon or Casio, but you'll get used to it in a matter of minutes.
My only wishes would be a way to adjust the shuter speed so that going up in ISO does not brighten the subject so much, a live histogram, and a cradle.

I have spent endless hours reviewing almost everything that I can find online about small digital cameras and have looked at numerous ones in stores. I recently narrowed my decision down to the Canon A620, Canon SD550, and Fuji F10. The Fuji F10 was actually the camera I intended to get in the first place but was somewhat swayed by a store clerk and Canon users. The A620 was bigger than what I wanted, and I actually saw no difference in print quality between it and the SD550 Digital Elph when using the auto setting. I am an amateur, though and do very little with manual controls.

I don't doubt for a minute that Canons are good, and it may depend on what you are looking for. However, there is absolutely no comparison between the SD550 and Fuji F10 when shooting in lowlight areas and quite often for color on the finished product. I took several shots in different settings with the cameras set on auto and no flash. The Fuji captured pictures that Canon couldn't get. I personally also found the Fuji easier to handle. With one hand, you can flip between review and photo mode and don't have to keep re-setting the flash preference each time you use it. Once I got used to the menus, I personally had little problem finding anything and maybe even less than with the Canon.

Fuji's battery life is unbelievable. Although I don't understand the reasoning behind the dongle setup, I didn't find it to be a big deal. I may buy a separate more portable battery charger for travel that can be plugged into the cigarette lighter too but probably wouldn't need it given how long the juice lasts. As is the case with many digital cameras, the memory card isn't sufficient. I plan to get a 1GB card and shoot away. I am currently not using a card reader and understand that there may be a particular reader that is needed for a 1GB card.

I must admit that I do like Canon's Zoom Browser better than the Fuji software, but you can use whatever software you want. The main drawback that I can see to the Fuji is the lack of an optical viewfinder when taking pictures in bright sunlight, but there is an adjustment for brightening the screen. If you are shooting under those conditions, you should probably have the sun behind you anyway and could probably simply shadow the screen with your head. There is also no histogram, but I enjoy seeing the shutter speeds when I am focusing.

From what I have read, I am also less concerned about a cracked LCD screen or finish wear on the Fuji. Time will tell. I also considered the Fuji to be a good value at $100 less than the Canon. Sorry, Canon.

I'm a professional photographer. I like to have a small camera to keep in my pocket at all times. I used a Pentax Optio S4i for a year. It was a great little pocket camera (tiny) but the image quality really fell apart when you set the ISO higher than 100. I wanted a pocket camera with image quality rivaling a professional DSLR. This is the camera. There are plenty of things to complain about... the confusing menus, the lack of manual controls... etc. But I shopped around a LOT and this camera has the best image quality (I've seen) at 400 thru 1600 of any pocket camera on the market at any price. It operates very, very quickly too.

I had a problem with my Canon Powershot S500 and had planned to repurchase as I liked the size and quality of photo for the camera price/function range. But I had got it at a good price and couldn't re-buy for less than $100 more so started looking around at comparable cameras. Hadn't really heard of this one but did some research on-line, CNET, etc, liked what I was reading and decided to gamble on it. End result - I love this camera. I am a point and shoot person who takes tons of photos. This camera is user friendly -- which has me actually messing with settings and taking better photos. The screen is awesome - 2.5 inches. The photos so far are great, even for me! My only beef with it is the hook-up for downloading and for charging the battery. the instructions have me hooking up three cords for one and two to do the other. Doesn't make sense to me. I bought this for about $325 on amazon and bought a 1G xD card for $85 and think that this camera is really more than worth it.

Takes great pictures. Especially impressive macros, so if closeups are important, this camera is a very good choice. It would be nice to have a greater optical zoom, but that doesn't seem possible on such a small camera. I took this camera on a puffin trip in Maine this summer and just snapped random pictures without trying. I was amazed at the quality. The resolution allowed me to zoom in to a spec on the image and realize that I had great shots of a flying bird in perfect focus. Unbelievable. I had pictures with detail that I couldn't see. Very easy to use too.

The Fujifilm FinePix F10 is a 6.3MP point-and-shoot digital camera made by Fuji Photo Film Co. of Japan (and in Japan). Fujifilm is Fuji's brandname here in the U.S. If I say "Fuji" in this review, you know I mean Fuji the company or Fujifilm the brand.

While neither thin nor stylish, the F10 truly excels in picture quality. Whether used indoors or outdoors, the F10 takes sharp pictures with very pleasant colors. If you ever used Fuji's color film in the past, you know the company is famous for true-to-life color reproduction on film. This F10 carries on this tradition and the pictures it takes are very pleasing to the eye.

The most amazing part about the F10's excellent, superb picture quality is there's very little noise even at high ISOs, such as 400 or 800. (I'll explain ISO in a bit.) At 1600, the highest setting, you'll notice some noise when you view a picture at its full resolution. However, when you print an ISO 1600 picture from the F10 at 5x7" or smaller, the print quality will still be excellent.

(ISO refers to the sensitivity of the camera's sensor. In the old days of film photography, it referred to the film "speed." It was also known as the ASA rating before it became an international standard. The higher the ISO setting, the less light you need for a proper exposure, but also the more noise, or digital specks, you get in the final picture. This phenomenon is a law of physics.)

The bottomline is, F10 takes amazingly beautiful pictures. I rate its picture quality higher than my 6.1MP digital SLR, the Nikon D70. I also rate it higher than all my previous compact digital cameras from Canon, Casio, Minolta, Nikon, and Sony. I cannot describe how much I'm in awe with the F10's picture quality performance.

In short: if you want a compact digital camera that takes truly excellent pictures, you should just get an F10.

There are two reasons for the F10's top-of-the-class picture quality: 1) its CCD sensor (the camera's eye) is 1/1.7" in size, which is bigger than most compact digital cameras' sensors; 2) it uses new-generation Super CCD technology developed by Fuji -- there are actually a total of 6.63 million pixels on the CCD sensor, of which 6.3 million are displayed in the final image, which means the extra 330,000 pixels are used to provide additional information about exposure and color. This extra information, even though not visible in the final picture, helps the camera's ADC (analog-to-digital circuit), which is the camera's brain, produce an awesome picture.

Add to the big CCD sensor a superior 3x Fujinon lens (Fujinon is Fuji's brandname for its line of camera lenses) and Fuji's know-how in reproducting eye-pleasing colors, you get picture quality that will make everyone happy.

The F10's excellent high-ISO performance also means you can take natural-looking portraits indoors without resorting to the harsh white light of the camera flash. You know how it is: you take a picture of a group of friends indoors, and everyone in the front looks like Michael Jackson (the guy who bleached himself) and the rest in the back look like dark-gray wolves hiding in the forest. The F10 has a "Natural Light" mode which suppresses the flash, jacks up the ISO, and takes a picture that looks soft and pleasant. If you did this with most other digital cameras, you'll get lots of digital freckles on your friends' faces. With the F10, the result is much more pleasing and the freckles much less noticeable, especially in final print (unless you print a poster the size of Niagara Falls).

The F10 can also take movies. You choose from two resolutions: VGA (640x480), which is the default, or QVGA (320x240). The movies are taken at 30fps so they are pretty fluid. The VGA resolution means you can actually use this as a camcorder -- just make sure to get a large xD memory card. (See my review of the Fujifilm 1GB Type M xD card for some details.)

Now, if you are a control freak type, the F10 may not be right for you. This camera is designed as a point-and-shoot, or as they call it, a foolproof photo machine. You don't get many manual controls. You can't control shutter speed or aperture. You can't focus manually. Even the image quality and resolution settings are simple: whereas other brands let you set quality (i.e., JPEG compression level) and resolution separately, on the F10 you have a total of six choices that encompass both quality/compression and resolution.

I *am* a control freak, but I don't mind the F10's lack of manual controls because, 1) I have my Nikon D70 digital SLR whenever I need ultimate "artistic" controls, and 2) I bought the F10 as a point-and-shoot for the times when I'm too lazy to want to make any manual adjustments. You should ask yourself how important manually setting focus or adjusting aperture/shutter speed is for you when you consider the F10.

What else is there to say? Oh, the F10 is quite easy to hold. It's not ultra-thin or ultra-compact, so it's actually easier for me to hold. It has a large 2.5" LCD screen which acts both as the viewfinder (to compose the picture) and playback screen. It's sharp and bright (and can "gain up" to superbright in low light situations) and displays fluid motions. The F10 lacks an optical viewfinder (which some photo purists will insist on having) but does have an AF-assist lamp to improve autofocus in dim light situations.

In terms of ease of use, the F10 is very easy to pick up and go. You almost don't need to read the manual to get started. On the other hand, almost all controls are accessed via a menu system, which is not the best kind of control scheme in the world. The user's guide is your typical Japanese-translated-into-poor-English type you'd expect from a Japanese manufacturer.

In summary, like the other reviewers have pointed out, this camera ranks very high in the picture quality department. As long as you are comfortable *not* having manual controls other than ISO setting and exposure compensation, I bet you'll be very happy with the F10's picture quality. Its exterior styling doesn't excite anyone, but as columnist David Pogue of the New York Times (and Macworld) points out: in photography, it's the inside that should count -- and he endorses the F10.

BTW, the F10 is made in Japan, unlike other similar-priced digital cameras which are usually assembled in Indonesia, Thailand, China, or the Phillipines.

If you want a pocket size camera for travel that takes great low light photos - this is the best! I've used this camera extensively this last year in my travels and it's been outstanding, it starts up fast, is fast between shots, takes clear, sharp detailed photos, and is absolutely outstanding in low light/night situations. I don't even use the flash most of the time, I just set the camera to the natural light setting and I find that most of the time it takes better photos that way than with the flash. I've used it in churches and museums without a flash and the photos have been clear, well lit, and sharp. And I've used outside at night without a flash with similar results. I've posted photos from my recent Germany trip which were either taken at night or inside, all set on the natural light setting without a flash. This camera is slightly bulky but I think that is an advantage as it makes it easier to hold the camera steady in low light situations. Plus this camera is very sturdy, I've dropped it at least 3 times, unfortunately, and other than a couple of scratches on the case there were no adverse effects - still works perfectly. If you want a camera that takes very good photos in low light - this is the best. If Fuji comes out with another camera with a larger zoom lens but is just as good at low light and high ISO's I'd buy it in a flash even if it was slightly larger in size. I have absolutely no regrets about this purchase.

I rarely write reviews but after using this camera for six months and recommending it to multiple friends I thought it was time. I am an amateur photographer and own a lot of cameras and equipment. I was looking for a backup when I went out with a film camera to capture things if the camera failed. I spent about two months on the Web reading reviews, visiting Best Buy and Circuit City to handle the cameras, and studying the various features of cameras of this type and price range. This camera came out a clear winner for its size, low light features, and battery power. Although intended as a backup this camera has turned into much more. It doesn't have the optical qualities of a Leica or a Hasselblad but it isn't meant to. This camera is small enough to slip into a bag or puse and keep it there all of the time. The battery power is amazing, I can take about 500 shots on one change (and I take a lot of pictures). Some people have complained about the menu but really it takes very little practice to master it (that said I shoot exclusively in "Manual" mode). The pictures look great. I've blown them up into 12x18 and bigger and they loose no quality if taken at ISO 200 or lower. The only disadvantage is the cost of the xD cards, but I bought one 1GB one on Amazon for $80 and it holds a lot of pictures... I doubt if anyone would need more. If you are looking for a compact camera to keep around all of the time that will take high quality photos while allowing the user to mess with exposure etc... this is my best recommendation.