Digital Camera Comparison/Review, June 10, 2006
Between Fujifilm FinePix F601, FinePix F30, and Panasonic SDR-S100

I just got my new Fujifilm FinePix F30 (6 megapixel) digital camera yesterday. This little camera got a European TIPA award, and its predecessor, the F10, was recently top-rated in a leading consumer magazine. Naturally I had to do my own head-to-head comparison between the F30 and my 4-year-old FinePix F601 (3 megapixels) and my 0.5-year-old Panasonic SDR-S100 hybrid video/still camera (also 3 megapixels, and already obsoleted by the SDR-S150!). You can also review my first digital camera comparison from 2002.

Other Reviews: C-Net (6/7); DCRP (6/28); Steve's (7/17); DPReview (7/25); megapixel.net (July)

Update (5/22/07): Here is a good article on high ISO modes in compact cameras, which concludes by pointing out that the F30 family is the lone exception among compact cameras for producing good results at high ISO settings.

The F30's strength is low-light situations (and compact size). It has ISO 3200 capability. The SDR-S100, on the otherhand, because it's more of a video camera, has a large-range 10X zoom. One thing I didn't care for on the F30 is that when connecting to a Windows XP PC, it does not make the xD card data available as if from a hard drive volume, like most other flash media. Instead, it comes up as a "camera" device under "My Computer" with no drive letter assigned. It is beyond me why people find this more convenient than the old method. It's so much handier to simply have a drive letter assigned. As a work-around, I bought a separate xD card reader.

Other comments: I was a little disappointed with focusing time on the F30 (lag between between pressing the shutter button half way and getting the AF/AE lock), but then I realized that I had the "high speed shooting mode" of the F30 turned off. When this is turned on, it reduces the focusing time. It's hard to tell from the manual, but I think this primarily trades with battery life. The F30 brochure claims the F30 snaps the picture 0.01 seconds after AF/AE lock, but I did not find it to be especially more responsive than my F601 or the Panasonic SDR-S100.

For all of the shots below with flash, the F30 was in automatic mode. I believe this uses the "Intelligent Flash" feature that the F30 brochure brags about. This is not explicitly mentioned in the user manual, but if you look at the EXIF settings for the pictures below, you can see that even with the flash enabled, the F30 still takes some pictures at ISO 800, so it uses both ISO and flash to get the shutter speed down while maintaining as much natural light as possible. This leads to flash pictures with a brighter background, which is a nice feature.

All in all, I think the FinePix F30 lives up to its reputation as an excellent low-light performer. That combined with it's nicely compact size (it is noticeably more comfortable for me to carry the F30 in my pants pocket than either the F601 or the SDR-S100) make me very happy with this purchase.