Fuji Fuji Finepix F550EXR

Just bought this a couple of days ago and so far I am very happy with it. It works beautifully for what I want it for which will be that camera that is always with you no matter what, and fits in your pocket at outings or gatherings, but will still serve as an arty kind of cam as required.

A couple from yesterday around sundown (had to wait til the battery charged up, darnit!)
yachts.jpg


sundownu.jpg


Camera specs that mattered to me
1) Semi-manual controls (aperture and shutter priority, and ISO setting)
2) EXR CMOS sensor. Its not as large as those in cameras like Canon's G series or S95, or the Panasonic LX and Olympus XZ, but its larger than the average at ½"
3) Shoots RAW, RAW+JPG and JPG
4) Size: Visually, it looks smaller. Putting it next to my TZ7 it even looks as bulky... but in the hand its heavier but feels smaller, and it slides easily into a pocket in slacks or trousers.
5) LCD screen 460k dots. anything less these days is just not good enough
6) Velvia film mode in other than EXR setting
7) 16Mp... well... I wished it had been fewer MP but in fact all those MP crammed into this tiny sensor dont seem to have detracted from IQ much at all.
8) 15x zoom, a bit more than I need but still... its OK. 24mm wide.

Of course it cannot possibly produce the same IQ as my K-5, but its up there with my G11, with its larger sensor. Pixel peepers would notice the usual smeary kind of image that Fuji cameras (and others) produce in jpgs, but for the web and showing stuff to the family... its better than good.

Here's a 100% crop of part of my cat's fur, the smearies are quite obvious, but only for pixel peepers.
100pctommy.jpg


Full specs at FUJIFILM Australia
 
They look pretty good.
By the way, we don't have any pixel peepers on this forum.
What we do have is... Quality Control Image Inspectors.
Those are the guys to watch out for... I'm not naming names tho....
don
 
They look pretty good.
By the way, we don't have any pixel peepers on this forum.
What we do have is... Quality Control Image Inspectors.
Those are the guys to watch out for... I'm not naming names tho....
don

muaaahahaha, thanks for the warning :)

This camera is really surprisingly good. I haven't activated the GPS module yet as I hear it chews through battery, but I'll do so when I really think I won't recall where I was at the time of shooting, or if I plan to u/l to flickr just to save some futzing about.
 
Re: Disappeared pictures: This is what I'm seeing

Just bought this a couple of days ago and so far I am very happy with it. It works beautifully for what I want it for which will be that camera that is always with you no matter what, and fits in your pocket at outings or gatherings, but will still serve as an arty kind of cam as required.

A couple from yesterday around sundown (had to wait til the battery charged up, darnit!)
yachts.jpg


sundownu.jpg

Re: Disappeared pictures: This is what I'm seeing
 
Strangely enough the only one of my five browsers I can see them in is Opera. They don't show up in any of the others. Still, at least I've seen them now. Very nice!

This is my issue: Seems like It's not just me.
 
Kyteflyer - it seems like an interesting pocket travel zoom. Since you already have the TZ7, one of the typical good ones, what do you think of the 550 in comparison?
 
Strangely enough the only one of my five browsers I can see them in is Opera. They don't show up in any of the others. Still, at least I've seen them now. Very nice!

This is my issue: Seems like It's not just me.

Thats very interesting... I'm not sure what is going on, I hotlink to other places as well and so far nobody has complained that they get a frog or whatever when viewing. However, what I will do is choose someplace else to send these shots to, just to be on the safe side. I guess flickr is as good a place as any. I ahve no problems seeing them in any of my browsers, whether I am logged in at imageshack or not. Tis too weird.

Kyteflyer - it seems like an interesting pocket travel zoom. Since you already have the TZ7, one of the typical good ones, what do you think of the 550 in comparison?

The things I like about the 550: RAW capture, manual control and smaller form. Its about the same weight in the hand (no doubt some grams difference but I cant tell when holding both). Controls don't get knocked off/out of whack so easily. More controls at fingertips via the little edial (a la canon style) around themenu button area. Being able to use the good old Velvia fuji film style... I like. A function button.

TZ7 does movies better. I found when I did a short down at the beach, just to test it out, that focussing on waves crashing about kept sending the AF out of whack, it was very disconcerting. TZ manages better. There's probably a setting I need to change in order to fix this issue but movies dont really interest me all that much. Just seems like every camera has move capacity these days.

15x vs 12x zoom... no biggie. Its OK, but its not why I bought the camera.

Build in GPS vs none... also *shrug*... GPS kills the battery pretty fast so I dont use it. If I had thought things through I probably would have made the effort to source the F500 instead which is identical but has no GPS module.

Nice pictures, great camera. I assume this camera does not have an EVF? Color output is okay (fantastic) with me. Thanks for sharing pics.

No evf... this really is a compact P&S with slightly better than average results because of the EXR sensor tech. If you wanted to get a not so compact, the Fuji HS20 uses the same sensor, and has an EVF. It also has a 30x zoom and is heavier than most because its lens is BIG by comparison with most bridge cameras. I am thinking about getting one and selling up my dslr gear... osteoarthritis is making it difficult for me of late, to manage the weight of the dslr systems, and that ain't gonna get any better, any time soon.
 
A couple more shots from yesterday. Sadly a disk failure took out *all* my previous shots, they were the only ones not backed up... all others are fine, just lost the F550 stuff :( And, my apologies to olli in advance, I had already uploaded these to imageshack. I'll do flickr from now on.

f550w.jpg

A wide shot, I think it wasn't quite at its widest... 4.4mm according to iphoto, whatever that is in 35mm terms

f550z.jpg

At full zoom at the same location, on the rocks in the previous shot.

Neither of these have had any adjustment, except for resizing for the web - wonky horizon included :). Shot in the camera's "P" mode, which let me choose Velvia as the "film" option.
 
Kyteflyer, sorry to here about your disc problems. This happened to me once a few years ago. Fortunately I managed to retrieve about 95% of the data including almost all my images. Depending on what the problem is you might be able to get your data back. Since that happened I've always had multiple backups - two external hard drives, all jpegs on Flickr, selected jpegs on Smugmug and currently backing up all RAW's on skydrive. Can never have enough backup:)

Regarding the frog in an icecube thing, I also read somewhere that this was a problem at times when browsing from overseas (i.e. outside the US) so possibly the fact that I'm browsing from Tbilisi might be an issue.

With these shots I get the same thing - frog in an icecube everywhere except in Opera which displays them perfectly. Very bizarre.
 
Kyteflyer, sorry to here about your disc problems. This happened to me once a few years ago. Fortunately I managed to retrieve about 95% of the data including almost all my images. Depending on what the problem is you might be able to get your data back. Since that happened I've always had multiple backups - two external hard drives, all jpegs on Flickr, selected jpegs on Smugmug and currently backing up all RAW's on skydrive. Can never have enough backup:)

Regarding the frog in an icecube thing, I also read somewhere that this was a problem at times when browsing from overseas (i.e. outside the US) so possibly the fact that I'm browsing from Tbilisi might be an issue.

With these shots I get the same thing - frog in an icecube everywhere except in Opera which displays them perfectly. Very bizarre.

Re backups: I only lost 3 weeks of pix in the last drive failure, so not so bad, and because it had been raining so much, I wasn't out taking many shots, so only ended up losing the ones I had taken on the same day as that first lot I posted here (lost them, too, the only record is that at imageshack). Anyhow, the potential loss scared me, because its actually the second time I have had a drive failure so I now have mutiple backups happening, cloning my internal drive so I have bootable external exact copy, and 2x2TB drives, one of which is a repository for all my media and downloads and the other of which is receiving the weekly backups. Changes don't happen often there, so I do a manual backup if there is a significant change and otherwise let it run weekly. the internal drive is a nightly backup and I also do Time Machine as well, to another external drive. Also have 2x skydrive accounts which I plan to use and just went pro on Flickr last night with the intention of doing exactly as you have done :) Its all good.

Sorry about the frog... but yes, possibly a location thing.
 
Back
Top