Fujifilm Finepix S100FS Review—Part 3

By Ctein

Part 1 of this review

Part 2 of this review

The Bad
Finally comes the bad news about the Fujifilm Finepix S100FS, a mix of major and minor complaints. You decide what matters to you:

Size: My normal carry-around film camera is medium format, so I can accept this behemoth. Still, I sure wouldn't have minded if the S100FS were more petite. Folks who are used to compact and lightweight cameras may find this one too burdensome to carry around casually.

Fuji FinePix Studio: The bundled RAW conversion software is an embarrassment to Fuji. It's painfully sluggish, running 10 times slower than ACR, including the screen updates when you adjust settings. It clips substantial amounts of highlight detail that ACR retains. It lacks most of the adjustments that ACR has, including some that are critical to getting really good image quality out of this camera (see "The Ugly" section). It only offers sRGB color space, not Adobe RGB with its greater color gamut.

The only thing it is good for is importing photos directly from your camera to your computer.

RAW/JPEG swap: Switching between RAW and JPEG mode involves running through a couple of layers of menu and 15 button clicks. Given that this camera presents some good reasons for using JPEG, even for a committed RAW photographer like me, this is annoying. Mode switching needs to be easier.

No cable release socket: The camera has Bulb setting, but to take advantage of it requires a special RR-80 Remote Release for an additional $40.

The Battery: The S100FS uses a proprietary lithium battery, with an anemic 7.2V, 1150 mAh capacity.  Three to four hours of serious photography depletes it, regardless of the number of photographs made. In one such session I was doing a lot of chimping and reviewing the results on the LCD screen and I barely made 45 exposures before the battery died. Just making photos, no chimping or in-camera deletions, I could eke out 135–160 photographs in the same 3–4 hours and then the battery was dead.

The Fuji battery isn't much smaller than three high-capacity rechargeable AAs, yet it stores less energy. It takes a sluggish two hours to recharge; I can recharge AAs in 30 minutes. In a pinch I can get AAs anywhere if AA rechargeables are drained. If you plan to use this camera for all-day outings, better own two spare batteries!

The Ugly
Now we come to the really big problem. The good news about an all-in-one camera is that you never have to buy another lens for it. The bad news is that you can't. The S100's lens is simply not up to the quality of the rest of the camera.

Others have incorrectly reported that the lens has serious lateral chromatic aberration. In fact, the problem is badly undercorrected coma in the blue (illustration 3). That produces color fringing that looks like LCA, but it's much more difficult to correct in postprocessing. It cannot be fully compensated for, only ameliorated. Along with fringing, coma's severe smearing wipes out fine detail entirely. High-contrast fine detail goes yellow in the highlights and blue in the shadows. This is unfixable.

1. Great color typifies RAW photos from the Finepix S100FS...

2. ...As does an exceptional luminance capture range and fine tonality. But...

3. ...The camera lens creates some serious (partly-correctable) problems. Upper left shows the problem, with the lower B&W illustrations showing the corresponding red, green, and blue channels. There's almost no LCA, but the blue channel has terrible coma. Upper right is after ACR corrections, which can almost eliminate the fringing but can't restore the yellow-blue balance to the small sand grains. (This is a 160% enlargement from illustration #4.)

4. After correction in ACR, this image looks fringe-free even in a 14x20" print.

For the first several weeks of my review period, I waffled between giving this camera a "do not buy" recommendation and "buy but only with the most severe reservations." The image quality was simply fabulous...except for the ways it was completely unacceptable. Finally, after considerable experimentation, I figured out how to use Adobe Camera Raw to correct the problem to a sufficient degree, most of the time:

Turn down sharpening, which exacerbates artifacts and really isn't necessary at this stage. In the lens corrections panel adjust the red-cyan slider until red/cyan fringing is gone. Then adjust the yellow-blue slider to minimize yellow/blue fringing. Turn on highlight defringing.

Usually this produces a photograph that will even stand up to pixel-peeping, with excellent fine detail over the entire field (Illustrations 3, upper right, and 4). In certain cases it will not (illustration 5). It will also do nothing to restore fine detail that is suffering from yellow-blue color crossover. But the proof is in the printing, and 98% of the time the results are satisfactory even by my demanding standards.

5. Sometimes, even ACR can't counter the blue coma problem. This photograph looks okay as a 7x10" print, but the residual blue fringes are evident in larger prints. Lower left shows the butterfly's leg before my ACR correction method at 100% scale; lower right is after correction. It's better, but it's not good.

Believe me, I do understand what it takes to bring in a camera and lens with these features at this price point. But it's a mistake to try to do too much on a limited budget. The Fuji optical engineers made a poor compromise, degrading the S100's superb inherent image quality with this lens. I (and I think most buyers) would have been entirely happy with a lens that went out to "merely" 300mm equivalent and was much better corrected.

By the way, the lens has a most peculiar boke, which John Kennerdell has dubbed janome boke—literally "snake-eyed" but really the exact equivalent of bull's-eye (illustration 6). Compared to the coma problem this seems almost trivial, but even a boke-blind bloke like me noticed it.

6. An odd boke, named janome by John Kennerdell, is exhibited by the S100FS's lens in this 50% scale illustration.

Conclusion
My recommendation is "buy, with some reservations." Not if you want a casual camera that will produce top image quality with no unusual effort on your part. I'm willing to go to the extra effort and then the results are impressive. So I finally decided I could embrace this camera, warts and all. In fact, I bought the review unit from Fuji and sold my S6000fd.

It's a shame the ways in which this isn't a great camera came from poor design choices rather than being unavoidable at the price point. Still, the photographs I'm making with it are giving me the kind of joy that I need from an all-in-one camera. Even if it makes me work a bit for that.

_______________________

Ctein

Comments

[KeithB]

I assume that the Fuji RAW converter you used was for the Mac. (You should probably point that fact out in the review.) Do you know if the PC version is any better? After all, Mac versions are sometimes afterthoughts. I think they give a High School kid the PC source code and say "Get this working on OSX by next week."

[Tom]

"The image quality was simply fabulous... except for the ways it was completely unacceptable."

I would use that line to describe my G9's IQ at anything above base ISO. Based on my previous P&S digital experience I think I could use that line for all P&S cameras.

[hugo]

Ctein, I still was hoping you'd provide a soundtrack of the musical exhibition illustrated in part 2 of this review ... just kidding.
The Fuji S100FS has its evident shortcomings, eg battery power: I ordered two spare ones online at a reasonable price (35 Euro each) but had to waite 6 weeks (I live in Italy after all) for delivery. As for the major concern, the lens problems, my mileage surely differs from yours, as I rarely put some picture to print (maybe a dozen in a year) and surely not at the size you are used to. Generally I shoot jpg and my postprocessing procedure is rather simple: rotate and crop, adjust levels and/or curves, some colour tweaking, sharpen and downscale for use on computer display. Turning down sharpness and saturation in-camera gives a more satisfying leeway for postprocessing.
For my needs I wouldn't upgrade to a DSRL, the upcoming compact cameras with larger sensors (M43 or similar) are a more tempting perspective.

[Ken]

Whew! That was quite an extensive review series for such a modest camera, Ctein.

"Still, the photographs I'm making with it are giving me the kind of joy that I need from an all-in-one camera. Even if it makes me work a bit for that."

I suspect that this observation was the most significant statement for most potential buyers. Casual / amateur photography is all about personal enjoyment.

[Jay Moynihan]

Thank you for your thoughtful review.
When this model first appeared, I downloaded full-size jpegs from independent sources and printed them out at my usual Epson R800 on 8 1/2x11 paper.

What I thought was CA, and the strange slight magenta/lavender "wash" across the high lights anywhere in the image scarred me off (though doing lots of PP, I fall in the life-is-too short crowd)getting one, and had just decided on a DSLR, anyway.

But I thought it was very unfortunate, and lense wise, a "bridge to far" by Fuji, so to speak. I still have a s6000fd and a s9100, and and an F20,that i still find useful. Back-in-the-day I used on occasion Fuji optics on 4x5, enlargers. Excellent. I had a sweet little folding Fuji 645 camera with a gem of a lense. So I am not bashing Fuji.

Thank you for someone finally actually explaining what the problm with that lense is.

[Jeff]

"RAW/JPEG swap: Switching between RAW and JPEG mode involves running through a couple of layers of menu and 15 button clicks."

Not necessarily. Simple solution is to set RAW up in one of the Custom modes C1 or C2. Then it is simply a turn of the dial and just a second or two to get to RAW.

I've owned this camera since April. I won't be parting with it anytime soon. You are right, the image quality is "simply fabulous".

[raincity4]

I haven't handled the S100FS, but it couldn't be much lighter or more compact than one of several currently available DSLRs + kit lens.

When I go out into the city with a camera but nothing specific to shoot, I throw a K20d and one pancake lens (for a normal FL) and a Pentax 50-200 (for telephoto perspectives) into my backpack. The 50-200 pocket zoom is kit-lens tiny, and all of it fits into whatever space happens to be in my backpack. Altogether, and all 3 dimensions considered, they're not much bulkier than a GA645.

The k200d is even smaller...

[Lilianna]

Ahhhhhh, thanks so much for clearly explaining the lens issues.
SO despite the really really good Jpeg engine, this camera must shot RAW to correct this?
Or do this issues show up in jpegs as well?
Just curious, since the engine has so obviously been so carfefully thought out...

[Craig]

Ctein,

When did you make it back to the Twin Cities to visit?

I immediately recognized the floor of the sunken garden in the Como Conservatory; did you enjoy the butterfly exhibit?

- Craig

[Ctein]

Dear Keith,

Sorry for the omission; I should have indicated that the suckiness was platform-independent. Well, not quite platform-independent-- the Fuji software is only SIX times slower than ACR under Windows instead of 10 times slower.

Both the Mac and the Windows versions badly clip the highlight information, lack essential (for this camera) controls like color fringe correction, and only offer sRGB color space. Truly awful software.

Dear Tom,

Don't have much experience with digital P&S's; you could be right about this. I can say that the Fuji S6000 was a much more "balanced" camera; I'd weight the various image quality aspects between a B- and a B+ (scale is entirely arbitrary and unknowable [ grin ]). Whereas with the S100, it ranges from A to C-.

Dear Hugo,

If all you need is JPEG's at screen resolution, even a very high-quality screen resolution (which is circa 2 megapixels), I think the S100 is serious overkill and unnecessary expenditure of money. Unless one needs the specific features of this camera (like the burst mode), I think the S6000 would serve better and would cost half as much.

I know this is a little late to do you any good, but maybe it will prevent someone else from buying the camera who doesn't really need it.

Dear Jeff,

Hey, I didn't think of that! Good use for the custom settings, especially for me, since I can do 99% of my photography in Program mode (with manual adjustments). I can leave the default as RAW and set up a custom one for JPEG. Thanks!

Dear Lilianna,

Yes, the lens aberration problems will show up with both RAW and JPEG images, but Adobe Camera RAW can open up JPEG's as well as RAW files. So you can do the color fringe corrections and tweaks that I talk about on JPEG's.

~ pax \ Ctein
[ please excuse any word salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
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-- Ctein's online Gallery http://ctein.com
-- Digital restorations http://photo-repair.com
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[Ctein]

Dear Craig,

I was in Mppl for the second half of June. I'll be back for another visit for the second half of October.

Loved the butterfly tent! Went back for a second day's visit. (I seriously approve of public parks and zoos that are FREE, on philosophical principles. Naturally, I made a substantial donation.)

DD-B got some good Conservatory photos. He made an especially nice one in the sunken pool wing with his fisheye. Really, I'm not a fan of fisheyes; this is a seriously fine photo. He may be induced to post it.

[Lilianna]

Ctein, I ought to have realized that, sorry :(
I am still on the Post Process/RAW workflow learning curve using my S6000fd and Finepix Studio/S7RAW.
Even with such basic(by most standards) tools I am finding the results very satisfying. There are several examples on my flickr site.
I am going to wait and see what Photokina brings to the table before deciding if I am going to buy the Fuji or not.
That being said I really appreciate your in-depth appraisal of this most interesting camera.

[Carrina]

I like the fact it is a larger size, looks more authentic. I am really wanting to get this camera. I like Fuji. I have a s700 which is your regular big zoom all in one. I have gotten some great pictures with it. The only problem is I cannot get the range with it I would like (I always use it in manual mode.) What is your opinion on the one I have compared to this. I am not ready for a SLR camera just yet, but I want something that will give me a little more then I have got.

[kandoro]

Since the battery life is a problem with the s100fs I started using the DPS-9000 which has well over 2000 mAh rating..

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006OAJ4

It will function pretty much on any cam with 7-8 volt input...Adds some weight but also adds what amounts to two more batteries...The camera seems prone to using the DPS-9000 power first and the in cam battery last, which is preferrable to me..Plus the DPS-9000 has it's own depletion lights...And it costs less that a Fujifilm battery...These cells are high quality as my first unit is well over 4 years and still working great...The only negatives are the cord and you have to remove it to change the camera battery...Thought I would mention it just in case anyone is interested...

Also thanks for your ACR CA correction technique..Much less loss of detail over conventional PF type removal...

[Nick.]

Kandoro.

I am waiting delivery of a DPS-9000. I understand it comes with an adapter for 5V Fuji cameras. I assume there is an included cord that plugs straight into the s100fs for the 7.5V.

Thanks, Nick