SINGAPORE: The first digital compact camera to utilise Fujifilm’s new EXR technology has arrived. The Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR (S$549) is the anchor of the now legendary F-series, replacing the hugely-successful F100fd.

Blessed with the ground-breaking 12-megapixel Super CCD EXR switchable image sensor along with a revamped EXR image processor, it retains F100fd’s 5x optical zoom (28-140mm equivalent of 35mm) lens but it has a bigger three-inch display packed into a smudge-free metallic black or silver body that looks uncannily like the F100fd.

Although only slightly bigger than a credit card, it is somewhat thick compared to the competition. But that provides a good grip for my right fingers to rest nicely. All the controls are within touching distance on the right side of the camera.

Button layout is logical. The dial wheel of the F100fd has been replaced by a mode dial with a selector button to make changing of settings easier. However, a quirk from the F100fd is retained — the built-in flash sits on the top right edge at the front of the camera, making it susceptible to being blocked by your fingers. Another problem inherited from the F100fd is the barrel distortion at its 28mm wide-angle focal length.

Camera operation is zippy with minimal shutter lag. Auto-focusing is quick in good lighting conditions but suffers a bit in low-light conditions. Startup is a tad slow at 2.5 seconds, shutdown takes 1.2 seconds.

But, it’s well worth the wait.

The new EXR image sensor allows you to switch among High Resolution (HR) mode, High Sensitivity and Low Noise (SN) mode and Wide Dynamic Range (DR) mode. The HR mode uses all 12 million pixels to give you intricate detail; the SN mode uses two adjacent pixels as one big pixel to capture more light in dark conditions; and the DR mode uses adjacent pixels to capture different exposures to produce higher level of details in highlights and shadows. Thus, the SN and DR mode will produce only 6-megapixel images.

You can also switch to EXR AUTO mode, where the camera will decide which scene or EXR mode to use. The EXR AUTO mode is really smart in assessing the situation, allowing you to concentrate on capturing that decisive moment. It’s really “point-and-shoot”!

Image quality is superb regardless of the mode you choose, with sharp rendition of pixels, excellent details and natural skin tones. White balance is spot on, with colours reproduced faithfully, especially when you switch to “Vivid” mode under Film Simulation. The details picked up in the shadow areas by the F200EXR are awesome, but there is a caveat.

The noise level seems slightly higher than that of the F100fd when you use the SN and DR mode at ISO 1,600 and above. My guess is that with more light picked up by the pixels, it also means a higher chance of more noise being introduced into the image. Still, the noise level at ISO 800 on this setting is pretty low. Pictures shot at ISO 400 and below are generally devoid of noise artifacts, with detailed and clean images at ISO 100.

On the down side, the F200EXR can only capture video at VGA mode when the competition is releasing digital compact cameras capable of recording high-definition (HD) video. Furthermore, you cannot zoom in or out during video mode. But with the potential of the EXR image sensor, I think it’s a matter of time when HD video recording will premiere on the F-series. - TODAY/sh