Fuji FinePix 1300Fuji updates their entry-level 1.3 megapixel model, adding USB for fast file downloads<<Reference: Datasheet :(Previous) | (Next): Print-Friendly Review Version>> FinePix 1300 Sample ImagesReview First Posted: 11/28/2000 |
| We've begun including links in our reviews to a Thumber-generated index page for our test shots. The Thumber data includes a host of information on the images, including shutter speed, ISO setting, compression setting, etc. Rather than clutter the page below with *all* that detail, we're posting the Thumber index so only those interested in the information need wade through it! ;) |
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Outdoor portrait: (636k) The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many digicams, which is precisely why we set it up this way. The object is to hold highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat" picture with muddy colors, and the Fujifilm FinePix 1300's exposure system does a reasonably good job. We shot samples of this image in both the automatic (629k) and daylight (636k) white balance modes, choosing the automatic setting for our main series (the daylight setting produced very similar results, though just a hair warmer). Color balance looks nice throughout the image, though the blue flowers and pants appear slightly dark. (These blues are somewhat difficult for many digicams to reproduce correctly.) Skin tone is a little reddish, but the red flower seems in check and not too bright. Resolution looks pretty good and crisp, with a lot of fine detail visible throughout the image, quite good for a 1.3 megapixel camera. We noticed that the details of the face and hair appear slightly softer than those of the flower bouquet, suggesting that the autofocus locked onto the flowers in the foreground. The shadow areas show a lot of detail, with a moderate level of fairly fine-grained noise. Our main image was taken with a +0.6 EV exposure adjustment, which did the best job of adequately exposing the shadow areas without overexposing the highlights too much. The table below shows the results of a range of exposure settings from zero to +1.5 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings:
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Closer portrait: (620k) The F1300 does a decent job with this closer, portrait shot, though we see quite a bit of distortion from the wide angle lens. (Shorter focal length lenses tend to distort facial features in close-up shots like this and the availability of longer focal lengths is a key feature if you're going to be snapping close-up people shots.) Continuing with the automatic white balance setting, we shot our main image with a +0.3 EV exposure adjustment. (This close-up shot generally requires less exposure compensation than the wider Outdoor Portrait.) Resolution and detail look much better with this shot, as the strands of the model's hair and other details around the face are a little sharper. The green leaves against the model's shirt appear very crisp as well. Noise level remains moderate and fine grained in the shadow areas. The table below shows the results of a range of exposure settings on the F1300, from zero to +1.3 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings:
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Indoor Portrait, Flash: (657k) The F1300's built-in flash (657k) does a fairly good job of illuminating the subject, though color balance appears slightly magenta in the shadow area and background, and the overall exposure is rather dark. The dark exposure is almost certainly due to the light background and the model's white shirt fooling the flash exposure system: We missed the flash exposure compensation option found on Fuji's higher-end cameras. Despite the strong color cast in the background, the model's white shirt has a good white value, and the face and flowers are reasonably well lit. We also shot with the camera's slow synchronization flash mode, first with no exposure compensation, which produced this (601k) very orange image. Though the color cast is very strong, more ambient light is in the image, which evens out the shadows. Next, we shot with the same slow synchro flash mode, but decreased the exposure compensation to -0.9 EV, which produced this (661k) slightly more evenly lit image. Though the image is dimmer and the orange color cast persists, we see more even lighting across the front of the subject. |
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Indoor portrait, no flash: (633k) This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability, given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs used for the lighting, and the F1300's white balance system falls victim to the difficult lighting. We tested the automatic (637k) and incandescent (631k) white balance settings, choosing the incandescent setting for our main series. The automatic setting produced a warm, orange cast throughout the image. Though the incandescent setting resulted in a slightly magenta image, it was the most accurate overall. Despite the magenta cast we mentioned, color balance looks reasonably good in the flowers, though the skin tones are a little too pink. For our main shot, we chose a +0.6 EV adjustment, as anything beyond that produced odd, splotchy highlights. A moderate noise level is present throughout the entire image, but is finely grained. One saving grace of the FinePix 1300's indoor shots is that they clean up beautifully with a one-click "auto levels" adjustment in Photoshop(tm), as seen here.(448k) The table below shows a range of exposure adjustments from zero to +1.5 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings:
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House shot: (680k) NOTE that this is the "new" house shot, a much higher-resolution poster than we first used in our tests. To compare the image of the F1300 with previously tested cameras, here's a shot of the original house poster in the automatic (670k) white balance setting. We shot samples of this image with the automatic (76k) and daylight (75k) white balance modes, choosing automatic as the most accurate overall. The daylight setting produced slightly warm results. Resolution is average to slighlty lower than average for 1.3 megapixel cameras we've tested, with a modest amount of fine detail visible in the tree limbs and roof line. The entire image appears a little soft, particularly in the shrubbery and brick areas, which are a little fuzzy. Noise is again moderate in the roof shingles and shadow areas. In-camera sharpening is scarcely visible, with just a pixel's worth of the halo effect around the light and dark edges of the white trim along the roof line. The table below shows the full range of resolution and quality settings for the F1300.
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Far-Field Test (664k) This image is shot at infinity to test far-field lens performance. NOTE that this image cannot be directly compared to the other "house" shot, which is a poster, shot in the studio. The rendering of detail in the poster will be very different than in this shot, and color values (and even the presence or absence of leaves on the trees!) will vary in this subject as the seasons progress. In general though, you can evaluate detail in the bricks, shingles and window detail, and in the tree branches against the sky. Compression artifacts are most likely to show in the trim along the edge of the roof, in the bricks, or in the relatively "flat" areas in the windows. The first thing you'll notice about this shot is that the house is rather distorted, seemingly leaning away from the camera at quite an angle. This is because the wide-angle fixed focal length lens of the F1300 required us to get quite close to the house, which meant we were also quite a bit below it, given the terrain contour. (The house is up on a small hill, above the street.) No particular fault of the camera here, but a good indication of why we like zoom lenses so much. (Compare the same shot taken with the Fuji FinePix 1400,(688k) and you'll see what we mean.)We shot this image using the automatic white balance mode, as it produced a very accurate white value and nice color balance throughout the image. This shot is a strong test of detail, given the practically infinite range of fine detail viewable from a distance. Resolution looks a little low, with a limited amount of fine detail visible in the tree branches against the sky and the shrubbery in front of the house. Again, we felt that the entire image is slightly soft. We also use this shot to judge a camera's dynamic range, evaluating how well the camera holds detail in both the shadow and highlight areas. The F1300 does a reasonably good job here, though it loses most of the details in the very bright bay window area. Alternatively, the dark shadow area beneath the cherry tree on the right side of the house shows a good amount of detail. As we've noticed in most of our testing so far with this camera, a moderate amount of noise is visible in the roof shingles and darker areas of the image. The table below shows the full resolution and quality series.
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Lens Zoom Range We've received a number of requests from readers to take shots showing the lens focal length range of those cameras with zoom lenses. Since the F1300 does not offer an optical zoom, this section of our tests is moot. |
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Musicians Poster (664k) We shot samples of this target using the automatic (73k) and daylight (74k) white balance settings, choosing the automatic setting as the most accurate overall. The daylight setting produced much warmer results (the significant amount of blue in the image often tricks digicams into overcompensating). Color balance looks pretty accurate throughout the image, though just slightly cool, judging by the skin tones. The blue of the Oriental model's robe is nearly accurate (a common problem area for digicams, as it's a hard blue to reproduce correctly). The tonal range is a little odd though, with the shadow values rather weak and milky. Playing around with manual adjustments in Photoshop produced this image,(572k) a drastic improvement. - We'd say that the F1300 is a camera that could definitely benefit from the "$30 camera upgrade" produced by our favorite image-adjusting application PhotoGenetics. Resolution is about moderate, with most of the fine detail visible in the bird wings and silver threads on the blue robe, including the subtle color gradations on the wings. Though the image is a little soft, the flower garland, violin strings, and beaded necklaces show a fair amount of detail. A moderate amount of fine grain noise is mainly visible in the blue background and shadows, some of which could be coming from the poster itself. Below is our standard resolution and quality series. Resolution/Quality series
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Macro Shot (628k) The F1300 performs surprisingly well for a fixed focal length camera in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of 3.32 x 2.49 inches (84.29 x 63.22mm). Color balance appears slightly warm, and sharp details appear a bit soft, but overall resolution is pretty good. The F1300's built-in flash (658k) does a pretty good job of throttling down for the macro area, with just a tiny reflection from the shiny coin. Color balance is still warm with the flash exposure, but the lighting is even and bright. |
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"Davebox" Test Target (617k) We shot samples of this target using the automatic (70k) and daylight (71k) white balance settings, choosing the automatic setting for our main series. The daylight setting produced slightly warmer results, judging by the small resolution target on the right side of the box. The large cyan, magenta, and yellow color blocks look reasonably accurate, though a little undersaturated. The large, kelly green square also looks a bit weak. The F1300 just barely distinguishes between the red and magenta color blocks on the middle, horizontal color chart, a problem area for many digicams. Exposure is about right, as the subtle tonal variations of the Q60 chart are visible up to the "B" range (another common problem area for digicams). We noticed that the tonal gradations of the vertical grayscale seemed to be less distinguishable towards the black end of the range, but the shadow area of the briquettes shows a fair amount of detail, with moderate noise. Most of the highlight details in the white gauze area are fully visible as well. Noise is also faintly present throughout the image, but remains fine-grained. Again, the whole image is just slightly soft. Below is our standard resolution and quality series. Resolution/Quality series
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Low-Light Tests The F1300 performed about as we expected it would in the low-light category, as we were only able to obtain useable images at light levels as low as four foot candles (44 lux). At the one and 1/2 foot candle light levels (11 and 5.5 lux), we were able to see the target, but the image was very dim. We also noticed a warm color shift between the one and two foot candle levels, with the darker image taking on a warm, orange-ish cast. Shots taken at 1/4 of a foot candle and lower are barely visible, if at all. Noise levels remain moderate and fine grained. To put the F1300's low light performance into perspective, an average city night scene under modern street lighting corresponds to a light level of about one foot candle. The table below shows the best exposure we were able to obtain for each of a range of illumination levels. Images in this table (like all of our sample photos) are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera.
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Flash Range Test (This test was added in August 1999, so cameras tested before that time won't have comparison pictures available. As we go forward though, all the new models will have similar tests available). Fujifilm rates the F1300's flash as effective from 2.3 to 9.8 feet (0.7 to 3.0m). In our testing, we found that the F1300's flash worked quite well all the way out to 14 feet, though the intensity does decrease a little with each foot of distance from 10 feet on. Below is our flash range series, with distances from eight to 14 feet from the target.
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ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test (643k) The FinePix 1300's resolution tests-out about average among the 1.3 megapixel cameras we've tested, showing about 550 lines per picture height in both horizontal and vertical directions. The edges of the target details aren't quite as sharp as the best 1.3 megpixel units, but there's also relatively few artifacts or aliasing present as the target lines get closer together. Resolution Series
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Viewfinder Accuracy/Flash Uniformity We found the F1300's optical viewfinder (132k) to be extremely inaccurate, showing a great deal more of the image area than is actually recorded. (116 percent of the final image area appears in the optical viewfinder.) The resulting image is actually cropped quite a bit from what shows in the viewfinder eyepiece. The F1300's LCD monitor (141k) was much more accurate, showing approximately 96.6 percent of the final image area at both 1280 x 960 and 640 x 480 image sizes. Since we generally like to see LCD monitors as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible, we are very pleased with the F1300's LCD performance. Optical distortion on the F1300 is moderate, as we measured approximately 0.65 percent barrel distortion. (This is a bit less than most digicam zoom lenses operating at their wide angle setting.) Chromatic aberration is also moderate, showing about two or three pixels of coloration on each side of the black target lines. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.) Flash distribution looks even throughout the center of the target, with falloff occurring in the corners and along the sides. |
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