Fuji FinePix 40iLook! There in your pocket! It's a camera! It's an MP3 player! It's... The Fujifilm Finepix 40i!<<Reference: Datasheet :(Previous) | (Next): Print-Friendly Review Version>> Page 14:FinePix 40i Sample ImagesReview First Posted: 11/03/2000 |
| 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! ;) |
 |
Outdoor portrait: (1716k) 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 40i's white balance system comes through with flying colors (no pun intended). We shot samples of this image in both the automatic (1696k) and daylight (1697k) white balance modes, which produced nearly identical results. We went with the automatic setting for our main series, though there is no distinct difference between the two. Color balance looks great throughout the image (although just slightly cool), and the blue flowers and pants look nearly accurate (these blues are quite difficult for many digicams to reproduce correctly). The skin tones and hair color also look accurate, as do the red and yellow flowers. We also noticed that the F40i does a nice job with the bright red flower, in that it doesn't create too much of a "halo" around it like many digicams are wont to do. Resolution is pretty good, with a lot of fine detail visible throughout the image, although the image shows the overall softness at screen resolution that we've found typical of cameras using this particular "SuperCCD" chip. The shadow areas show good detail, although there's a moderate amount of noise present. In fact, we noticed a slightly lower noise level present throughout the image. (The FinePix 40i's noise & resolution deserve some comment here: The Fuji 2.4 megapixel SuperCCD chip in the F40i is generally used with more than the usual amount of interpolation in the camera, producing a 4.3 megapixel file from a 2.4 megapixel chip. The resulting images look rather soft onscreen, and also show more noise than many competing 2-2.5 megapixel cameras. When printed at the same size as images from other cameras though (that is, both the conventional and SuperCCD images printed at 8x10 size), the images look much sharper and surprisingly noise-free. We thus caution readers to form their opinions of the F40i based on images downloaded and printed on their own photo printers: We think you'll be surprised by the image quality when viewed in that fashion.) Our main shot was taken with a +1.0 EV exposure adjustment, which did the best job of adequately exposing the shadow areas without overdoing the highlights. The table below shows the results of a range of exposure settings from zero to +1.5 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings:
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
Closer portrait: (1732k) Well OK, maybe not for really close-up portraits... The F40i has a little trouble with this closer, portrait shot, as its wide-angle fixed focal length lens visibly distorts the face. (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 shooting close-up people shots.) We again shot with the automatic white balance setting, with our main image requiring only a +0.3 EV exposure adjustment. (This close-up shot generally requires less exposure compensation than the wider Outdoor Portrait.) Resolution and detail look sharp and crisp, especially in the model's hair. Noise level remains very low and fine-grained in the shadows, and is somewhat visible in the house siding. Nice color and resolution, but we can't get past the distortion from the lens, which is rather striking. (We didn't let the model see this one. ;-) The table below shows the results of a range of exposure settings on the F40i, from zero to +1.5 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings:
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
Indoor Portrait, Flash: (1678k) The F40i's built-in flash has a little bit of trouble illuminating the subject while maintaining a good color balance. The very strong incandescent illumination shone through the flash exposure, resulting in a very warm-toned image. In our main image, we shot with a +0.6 EV flash adjustment, which produced a very warm, orange-ish image. Even the white shirt and flowers have a very orange cast, with no apparent true white value. A quick "auto levels" operation in Photoshop(tm) though, resulted in this image (637k), which shows excellent color balance, albeit with a fair bit of noise. We next shot with the Slow Sync (1694k) flash setting, with no exposure compensation, which produced a much brighter, but much more orange image. We continued with the Slow Sync setting, but boosted the exposure compensation to +1.3 EV (1712k), which produced an even brighter image. At this brighter setting, the highlight areas become too hot and appear a very bright, yellow/orange. The table below shows a range of exposures at the normal, Forced, flash setting with exposure adjustments from zero to +0.5 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings:
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Indoor portrait, no flash: (1659k) 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 F40i's white balance system had a little trouble. We tested the automatic (1690k) and incandescent (1691k) white balance settings, choosing the incandescent setting for our main series. Both settings produced warm images, though the automatic setting was almost a sepia, orange-ish tone. The incandescent setting's yellowish cast seemed the best of the two. As with the flash shot above, a quick auto levels operation in Photoshop again cleaned up the shot remarkably, as seen here.(639k) (The flowers remained a little undersaturated though.) Color balance is definitely on the yellow side, and the tones in the flowers appear undersaturated and dark. Skin tone is almost acceptable, though a little too warm. For our main shot, we chose a +0.5 EV adjustment, as anything beyond that produced blown out highlights. A moderately high noise level is present throughout the image, but the pattern is relatively small and fine-grained. The table below shows a range of exposure adjustments from zero to +1.5 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings:
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
House shot: (1775k) 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 F40i with previously tested cameras, here's a shot of the original house poster in the automatic (1734k) white balance setting. We shot samples of this image with the automatic (285k) and daylight (286k) white balance modes, choosing automatic as the most accurate setting. While the automatic setting does produce a slightly warm image, the daylight setting was much warmer, with a yellowish cast. Resolution looks very good in the house details and in the tree branches above the roof, although expanded file size does make it appear somewhat soft onscreen, particularly as seen in the shrubbery in front of the house. The corners of the image appear softer still, apparently due to curvature of field in the lens design, aggravated by the very short shooting distance we had to use due to the wide angle lens of the F40i. Noise is moderate in the roof shingles, and is also visible across the front of the house, particularly in the window screens and black shutters. In-camera sharpening is barely noticeable (we just picked up maybe a pixel of a 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.
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
Far-Field Test (1743k) 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. We shot this image using the automatic white balance mode, which produced an accurate color balance and white value. This shot is a strong test of detail, given the practically infinite range of fine detail viewable in a natural scene from a distance like this. Resolution looks crisp and clear throughout, though sharpest in the linear features of the house. The shrubbery and other organic elements appear a bit soft. If there is any corner softness in this image, it's very slight. We also judge a camera's dynamic range in this shot, comparing how well the camera holds detail in both the shadow and highlight areas. The F40i has a somewhat limited range, as it almost completely loses detail in the bright white paint of the bay window. Dark shadow detail in the wooded areas is slightly better, with definite leaf patterns visible. A moderate amount of noise is present throughout the image, possibly due to the camera's fixed 200 ISO setting. The table below shows the full resolution and quality series.
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
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. The F40i doesn't offer an optical zoom, but does feature a 3.75x digital telephoto. The digital zoom results in a slightly softer resolution, but the noise level appears to be the same as in the normal mode. (NOTE though, that the "digital telephoto" image here is only a 640x480 image: Basically exactly what you'd obtain by cropping-out the central portion of the higher-resolution non-digital-telephoto shot. We're not big fans of digital telephoto - It's perhaps useful for images shot for the web or email, but certainly not for anything intended for printing... (No knock against the F40i in particular, we just don't like digital telephoto in general.)
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
Musicians Poster (1730k) We shot samples of this target using the automatic (267k) and daylight (268k) white balance settings, this time with both settings producing nearly identical results. We chose the automatic setting for our main series, though both settings resulted in slightly warm images. (The large amount of blue in the image often tricks digicams into overcompensating, as did the F40i.) Despite the warm cast, color balance looks nearly accurate in the skin tones and the blue robe (a hard blue for digicams to reproduce correctly). Resolution looks pretty good, with a lot 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 details are again somewhat soft). The violin strings and beaded necklaces also show a nice amount of detail. A moderate amount of noise is visible throughout the image, some of which is due to the poster itself. Below is our standard resolution and quality series. Resolution/Quality series
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
Macro Shot (1623k) The F40i does an excellent job in the macro category, capturing an impressive minimum area of just 2.26 x 1.69 inches (57.35 x 43.02 mm). (A surprisingly good performance, given the wide angle lens of the F40i.) Color balance is slightly greenish, but detail and resolution are both very nice. The brooch appears a little soft, possibly due to a limited depth of field. The F40i's built-in flash (1607k) does a pretty good job of throttling down for the macro area, though there's uneven distribution and a rather dark shadow in the top right corner, due to the very close shooting distance involved. |
||||||||||||||||||
 |
"Davebox" Test Target (1651k) We shot samples of this target using the automatic (261k) and daylight (264k) white balance settings, choosing the automatic setting for our main series. The daylight setting produced a very warm image, the auto was pretty accurate, only slightly warm. The large primary-color (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow) blocks are pretty accurate, although the subtractive primaries (cyan, yellow, magenta) are just a bit undersaturated. The F40i just barely distinguishes between the red and magenta color blocks on the middle, horizontal color chart, often a problem area for digicams. Exposure looks about right, as the subtle tonal variations of the Q60 chart are visible up to the "B" range (another difficult area for digicams). The tonal gradations of the vertical gray scales are also completely visible, with the distinction between the last two black boxes just a little faint, but still detectable. The shadow area of the briquettes shows somewhat limited detail, and a significant amount of noise. Noise is moderately visible throughout the image, but more so in the darker briquettes square. Alternatively, nearly all of the details in the white gauze area are fully visible. Overall a good performance color-wise, but with quite a bit more noise than we'd like to see. Below is our standard resolution and quality series. Resolution/Quality series
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Low-Light Tests The F40i performed about as we expected it would in the low-light category, given that its slowest shutter speed is only 1/4 of a second. We were able to obtain reasonably bright, useable images as low as two foot-candles (22 lux), which is about twice as bright as an average city night scene under street lighting. (The image at one foot-candle was visible, but really not bright enough to be considered usable.) Noise is moderately high, but not as bad as we'd expected. 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.
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
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 F40i's flash as effective from 1.3 to 8.2 feet (0.4 to 2.5m), which is consistent with our findings. The flash is at its brightest at the eight foot mark, and while the flash is somewhat effective all the way out to 14 feet, the intensity becomes gradually dimmer with increasing distance. Below is our flash range series, with distances from eight to 14 feet from the target.
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test (1835k) The FinePix 40i did fairly well in the resolution test, with good detail visible to 800 lines per picture height vertically and 850 lines per picture height horizontally before aliasing set in. Some detail was visible to nearly 900 lines in both directions. We did notice what appears to be significant curvature of field in the extreme corners, most evident as a severe blur in the extreme lower left-hand corner. This target also reveals a rather marked light falloff in the corners: The target is in fact illuminated very evenly, the darkening in the corners is a product of the lens. Resolution/Quality series
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
Viewfinder Accuracy/Flash Uniformity We found the F40i's optical viewfinder (276k) to be fairly tight, showing approximately 81.8 percent of the final image area at all three image sizes. We like to see optical viewfinders accurate to 85 percent or better, so we'd mark the F40i down a little for viewfinder accuracy. We also noticed that images framed with the optical viewfinder are shifted towards the upper right corner of the image, and slant slightly towards the lower left corner. The LCD monitor (272k) was much more accurate, showing about 95.3 percent of the final image area, also at all three image sizes. Since we generally like to see LCD monitors as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible, we felt the F40i did pretty well in that area. We also noticed that images framed with the LCD monitor were slightly off-center towards the lower left corner, with a very slight slant towards the lower right corner. This was a fairly slight effect, but we're not used to seeing offsets in LCD viewfinders. We also snapped an image with the camera's 3.75x digital telephoto (71k) setting, but couldn't judge the frame accuracy because the digital telephoto setting blurs the image in the LCD display so much it's hard to see the fine lines of the target clearly. We also noticed increased noise and lower resolution with the digital zoom. Optical distortion on the F40i is moderately, as we measured a barrel distortion of 0.43 percent. Chromatic aberration, on the other hand, is low, as we noticed about 0.5 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.) As noted above, there appears to be significant curvature of field when shooting at short subject distances (the resolution target discussed above was only about 3 feet or so from the camera). Flash distribution is fairly even in the center of the target, with some falloff visible around the corners. We also picked up a little corner softness on this test target. |
||||||||||||||||||
Follow Imaging Resource: