12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
Takes great pictures but is delicate and vulnerable
Date of Review: May 16, 2009
The Bottom Line: If you're willing to keep it protected in a hard case, possibly the best choice for those who want a subcompact with enthusiast performance without enthusiast complexity.
I bought the F200EXR because the prospect of taking excellent pictures with a pocketable camera was just too irresistible. Fuji had already proven that possible with its legendary F30/31 series now discontinued. But those cameras lacked essentials like image stabilization and a wide angle lens--2 of my must haves.
I suppose there are many buyers who want the best performance in a pocket size camera, like myself. So I also considered the Panasonic Lumix LX-3, the only other pocket size (sort of) camera I know with an equally large sized light gathering sensor--a far more important feature in taking better pictures than the megapixel count. The LX3 has been on the market longer and can now be found at deeply discounted prices, making it actually less expensive than the F200EXR which is just now (May '09) starting to be found with mild discounts. I expect the F200EXR eventually to be available at $300 or less.
I decided on the F200EXR because it was physically smaller than the LX3 allowing it to fit into almost any pocket. It also had a much more flexible zoom range of 28mm--140mm (35mm equivalent). The LX3 had a tempting wider angle of 24mm, but zoomed only to 60mm, a very limiting feature.
Long story short: the Fuji does not disappoint as to picture quality. The bad news is that its construction is not robust enough for pocket duty. How do I know? In less than 90 days of ownership and use, the lcd monitor became corrupted, probably because of pressure to the screen or a flex in the camera body caused by pressure. There is no visible outer damage. And no, this is not covered under warranty because it is damage, not a defect, I am told. I did not expect this camera to be so much more fragile than my previous Panasonics which survived years of the same treatment. And I know that it is possible to engineer durability into a small device with a relatively large screen, because I have treated my iPhone to such trauma as being in the same pocket as my car keys, and I have dropped, bumped, and squeezed it mercilessly without inflicting any damage.
The F200EXR has a 3" lcd, still smaller than the 3.5" in the iPhone. But the Fuji body is a sort of flared square design that imparts none of the rigidity of the iPhone's strength enhancing compound curves. And it seems made of far less robust material. It seems obvious durability did not make it onto Fuji's priority list. I expected better from a $300 plus camera. Also, the monitor resolution is just average.
The solution to the ruggedness issue is easy. Just purchase a small hard case to keep the camera protected. Of course that destroys much of the small size advantage of choosing the Fuji. After this accident I bought some plastic 99 cent travel soap dish/containers that have a slightly domed top making them almost impossible to push in, and I now carry my pocket cameras in one of these at all times. Still less inconvenient than a $160 repair bill (cost to repair my F200EXR). Incidentally, my Panasonic Lumix FX500 which also has a 3" monitor came packed with emphatic warnings about its fragility including recommendations against carrying it unprotected in a pocket.
This Fuji does produce great pictures easily. The user interface takes some getting used to, and the user manual doesn't give any details on how many of the camera's advanced features work. I took several hundred photos with my Fuji before it broke, experimenting with the different setings. My advice: just leave it on EXR auto except when you mustn't use the flash. A couple of months after I had been using the camera, a really detailed and technical review on DigitalPhotographyReview.com was published and it provided a decent explanation of the advanced features.
Before describing what's special about the F200EXR's performance, I should get a few more complaints out of the way. First, the dual image stabilzation is noticeably inferior to that of my previous Panasonics (FX-01, FX-07, FX500) and a Canon SD800is that I also use. Second, the autofocus (there is no manual focus) occasionally malfunctions on distant objects, and when reviewing pictures on the camera's monitor, you can't zoom in far enough to see if your focus is absolutely sharp. Nevertheless, the pictures that are good are very good and in most cases look better than expected when you examine them at a pixel level on a high resolution external screen. There's movie capture but it's not HD.
The F200EXR's most special feature is the way it manages dynamic range. This refers to the difference between the darkest and the lightest features of a photograph. Since the light-to-dark range displayable on paper or a monitor is far less than that of the eye, that full range can only be captured if contrast is reduced so much that the result looks unnaturally washed out. If normal contrast is maintained, then the brightest parts of the picture become pure white and lots of the highlight detail is lost. And the dark parts become completely black and lots of the shadow detail is lost. Just look at your old photos and you'll see many cases where this is a limitation. For example, you're taking a picture during daylight inside a house where some windows are in the scene, with or without flash. Your subject looks fine but everything seen through the windows is washed out--with much of it pure white. Or you're in the woods where some areas are sunlight and others are well shaded. Your photo will probably have some areas that are so black that little shadow detail is visible as well as areas that are so light (such as white clothing) that no highlight detail is visible. This is very noticeable in pictures from the Canon SD800is I've been using as a substitute (even on Auto Contrast setting), as well as a Panasonic FX500 I'm also using. But the Fuji captures a whole lot of the detail the others wipe out.
Fuji's method is to offer variable and selectable dynamic range. There's no need for you to worry that you must learn all about this complex subject. Fuji provides a fully automatic setting (EXR auto), and it works pretty well. Also, when trying to capture wide dynamic range, the camera doesn't reduce the contrast throughout most of the light-to-dark range, but just lowers the contrast in the highlight detail so little or no information is lost. The result is a picture that has natural looking contrast but captures much more highlight detail, or allows you to slightly overexpose to get the shadow detail as well.
You can probably get as good dynamic range results with the LX3 by capturing files in the RAW mode and doing much laborious post processing yourself. But the complexity of so doing is beyond all but the most dedicated enthusiasts or professionals. The F200EXR does not offer RAW mode capture. Its excellent dynamic range performance makes such an option pretty much unnecessary.
In extreme cases, the F200EXR will yield a 6 megapixel picture instead of its full 12 megapixel output as it tries to capture extra dynamic range or reduce noise. While slight amounts of detail may be lost, there's still enough resolution to yield a sharp picture at a fairly large size.
The F200EXR takes surprisingly good pictures in low light without flash. It does so way better than my SD800is and way way better than my FX500. In brighter light the F200EXR stays sharp at full telephoto range too. All in all, it's a very versatile, simple to use camera.
In going through many detailed reviews, I haven't seen any small cameras that come close in low light performance to the current two with the larger (0.45 sq. cm vs. 0.25 sq. cm) sensors (F200EXR and Lumix LX3). Having used the F200EXR I can say it definitely can produce great pictures easily. Now, if only it had iPhone-like ruggedness.
