Tuesday, September 1, 2009

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.

4 comments:

Jarkko said...

Thank you very much for your f70 reviews. Thanks to yout shots and comments, I'm convinced to buy this camera.

Kim Letkeman said...

Jarkko, good luck with the F70. I carry it everywhere now. It really does handle itself well. Don;t forget to read my "how to shoot" posts and try those settings.

Jarkko said...

Yeah i'll check the instructions out. One thing popped in my mind. I'm still jugling between this and f200 exr a bit. The quality of night photos and bar photos is important to me. Do you know any good galleries where I can compare the output of these 2 cameras in night time/ high ISO levels?

What I've noticed, the f200 exr has been a bit more precise, but the noise levels between these 2 seem to be the same. What do you think? I don't care about the little loss of detail, but good noise performance is important to me.

Kim Letkeman said...

I've not seen a decent comparison at high ISO between these two ... you'd think there would have been one when you consider all the noise made on the Fuji Talk Forum by the people who owned both. But there was nada for good tests. So you'll have to just guess. The noise levels are acceptable with the F70 when the light is decent. When very dim, you'll get a lot of noise, but you'll get that with any cam. The flash performance on both is quite acceptable when you let the cam shoot 800 ISO and get fairly close.