Rangefinder Magazine
April 2006

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Digital Photography John Rettie
Fujifilm's 9MP Consumer Camera

REMEMBER HOW, not long ago, a 6-megapixel camera was the Holy Grail? Kodak was the first camera company to achieve the goal when it introduced one in the mid-1990s that cost all of $30,000. Fortunately, pricing dropped fairly rapidly, and one could buy a 6-megapixel camera for closer to $10,000 a few years later.

Six-megapixel cameras are nothing nowadays. If anything it’s regarded as the minimum resolution for any decent camera, whether consumer or pro. A camera with this sort of resolution will undoubtedly be included in a camera phone for under $100 before long; such is the pace of technology.

I’ve recently been trying the Fujifilm FinePix E900, a point-and-shoot camera with a sensor containing no less than 9 megapixels. In many ways this could be considered overkill for a consumer camera, but it does indicate the amazing quality that is obtainable from a camera with a sensor that is only 1/17 the physical size of a full-frame 35mm sensor. Put in perspective, it would result in a 154-megapixel sensor if the same size pixels were used in the Canon EOS-5D or 1Ds Mark II.

I have generally been disappointed with the quality of images in consumer cameras with 7- or 8-megapixel sensors because they suffer from excessive noise and soft images. Indeed, one or two manufacturers have introduced new cameras with lower resolutions than earlier models in order to deliver better quality images.

Now along comes Fujifilm with its fifth generation Super CCD sensor that seems to go a long way to addressing the shortcomings of small sensors with a large number of pixels.

The E900 is an average size point-and-shoot camera with a 9-megapixel Super CCD HR sensor and a 4X zoom lens (32–128mm equivalent). It has a fixed two-inch LCD monitor on the back and an optical viewfinder. Unlike many consumer cameras, the E900 is fairly fast in operation. The zoom moves out of the body rapidly when the camera is switched on, and it’s ready for shooting almost immediately.

As one would expect, there are plenty of options for automatic operation, but the camera can also be manually operated. One engineer told me it costs more to include manual settings in a camera, and that is one reason manual operation is not offered in lower cost cameras.

On the plus side, just two AA batteries power the E900. On the negative side, it uses xD storage cards, which are not as common as CompactFlash or SD cards. The camera comes with a 16MB card, which is almost useless since it only allows for about 15 seconds of video and cannot even capture a single RAW file, which is 18.8MB in size! Even the 64MB card I used would only hold 55 seconds of video or about 16 JPEGs.

All in all the E900 is a nicely finished compact camera that delivers great images at low ISOs and is ideal as a “pocket” camera. It retails for $499.

In a quick test I compared the E900 with five other cameras I happened to have in my possession: a 10.0MP Nikon D200, a 6.0MP Canon EOS-10D, a 5.0MP Canon Powershot A95, a 4.9MP Olympus E-1 and a 8.0MP Olympus E-500. I shot the same scene in bright sunlight so they were all set at approximately the same focal length equivalent to a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera.

On examining the images at 100% on the computer, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the detail on the images was pretty much in direct proportion to the number of pixels in the camera, not the size of the sensor.

When viewed at 200% though, the detail in the images shot on the Canon A95 was clearly the worst, which one would expect, as it is an older camera with a small sensor. The image detail obtained by the Nikon D200 was the best—but not by that much, considering it’s the newest and most expensive camera used in this quick test

Fujifilm claims the noise levels in the E900 are minimal at ISO 800. This may be true compared to other compact cameras, but it’s still quite noisy compared to what one expects from a pro camera. However, Fujifilm has announced a new point-and-shoot camera with a 6-megapixel sensor that has an ISO of 3200. Although I haven’t seen any images produce by this camera yet, it is obvious that the problem of noise is being overcome on smaller sensors.

What does all this mean to professionals? The consumer side of the electronics business drives most R&D, and I believe we are going to see less and less of a need to rely on big sensors for optimal quality. In its small way the E900 demonstrates how far small sensors have come in the last couple of years.

DxO Optics Pro

There are a myriad of programs available to convert RAW files from cameras. For those who feel the need to garner the best possible image shooting in RAW, using a conversion program makes a lot of sense. Sometimes those of us who shoot JPEGs wish we could utilize some of the tools available in RAW converters.

That’s the beauty of DxO Optics Pro—many of its tools will work on RAW or JPEG files. The program first appeared a couple of years ago. I tried it briefly, but I did not find it intuitive to use. Now it has reached version 3.5 and is much easier to comprehend.

The major difference, compared to other conversion programs, is the program’s ability to correct for lens distortions and chromatic aberration. It does this by using specific algorithms for each lens that have been created by the optical engineers in France where the program originates.

Thanks to the information contained in the EXIF file attached to every image, the program can figure out what lens was used and perform corrections uniquely configured to the specific lens and camera body. For example, I was able to remove vignetting from a JPEG photo I took of an Osprey. The program could also remove all of the artifacts from an image I shot accidentally at high contrast and high sharpening.

I can see myself using this program more and more—it certainly improves the performance of the growing list of lenses that have been profiled. About the only drawback is the minute or so it takes to process each image. However, images can be batch processed, so if one sets up a good workflow, the processing time is not such a problem.

DxO Optics is purchased directly from the company’s website, and one has to specify exactly which camera and lens modules are required. A unique individualized program is then created automatically for downloading. Pricing starts at $79 for a starter edition on www.dxo.com.

Quick Book Review

Window Seat: Photography and the Art of Creative Thinking

Here’s a question: As a photographer, how many times have you looked out of an airplane window and imagined a great photograph in your mind and wished you had your camera with you to capture the image? I know I have many times. I’ll also admit that I have taken some such photographs over the years, but I’ve never done anything with them.

Julieanne Kost has.

Anyone who has attended the WPPI Conventions in the last couple of years will know that Kost is an entertaining and informative speaker.

As Adobe’s Senior Graphic Arts Evangelist, she gets to travel all over the world teaching people all about Adobe Photoshop. Those who’ve seen her work also know she is great at photography, a craft she has been practicing since she was a teenager.

In a delightful book called Window Seat: Photography and the Art of Creative Thinking, Kost shows off her favorite images that she has taken through the windows of planes while traveling.

The images in the book are nicely presented, and there are no shots of cityscapes or airports. Instead, they are mainly abstract land scenes and clouds. In the small amount of accompanying text, Kost describes how to think creatively in order to come up with good ideas. Only at the end does she tell how she used Photoshop tools to make the images appear more dynamic.

The book, published by O’Reilly Media (152 pages, $39.99), is not a Photoshop text book per se. Instead it is more like a coffee table book that contains inspiring photographs taken by someone with an artistic eye who carries a camera on the plane and looks out of the window instead of watching the in-flight movie.