Fuji FinePix 4700Fuji packs a 2.4 million pixel "SuperCCD" sensor and 2400 x 1800 images into an ultra- compact digicam!<<Viewfinder :(Previous) | (Next): Exposure & Flash>> Page 5:OpticsReview First Posted: 10/7/2000 |
Optics
The 4700z is equipped with a Fujinon 3x, 8.3 to 24.9mm lens (equivalent to a 36 to 108mm lens on a 35mm camera). Apertures are f/2.8 or f/7.0 in wide-angle mode, ranging to f/4.5 or f/10.8 in telephoto. The lens aperture is apparently restricted to two possible physical apertures: Experimenting with the camera with gradually increasing illumination revealed that it would switch abruptly from f/2.8 to f/7.0, without passing through any intermediate values.
When the camera is off, the lens is stored inside the camera and protected by a mechanical cover that slides out of place as the lens telescopes out when the camera is turned on. Focusing distance ranges from 31.5 inches (80cm) to infinity in normal, wide-angle mode and from 7.9 inches (20cm) to 31.5 inches (80cm) in macro mode. Macro mode is quickly accessed by pressing the left arrow button while composing an image. A manual focus option is available in Night Scene, Manual and Continuous Shooting modes. Once activated, the focus is controlled by the left and right arrow buttons (the small information display guides the button functions). We'd like to see either a magnified "live" view during manual focusing, an explicit distance-readout display, or both. As it is, it's difficult to set focus accurately, relying only on the display in the LCD viewfinder. (On the other hand, using the "review" mode and the incredible 15x playback zoom, you can fairly quickly determine focus very accurately if you're willing to shoot multiple test frames.)
Macro coverage with the FinePix 4700 is fairly good, if not rising to the "microscopic" level of some recent cameras: At the 20cm (~8 inch) minimum focusing distance, the 4700 captures an area covering 1.92 x 2.56 inches (48.7 x 64.9 mm).
Perhaps due to the combination of very compact size, larger physical sensor size, and relatively long 3x zoom ratio (other compact digicams only go to a 2x zoom as of this writing in April, 2000), the lens on the 4700 shows more geometric distortion than usual. It is also a bit unusual in that it doesn't switch from barrel to pincushion distortion when going from wide to tele mode, but rather simply reduces the amount of barrel distortion at the telephoto end. At wide angle, we measured barrel distortion of 1.5%, decreasing to a barely-perceptible 0.3% at the telephoto setting. (Barrel distortion refers to a tendency for straight lines near the edges of the frame to bow outward in the middle.) By contrast though, chromatic aberration was quite low, with only one pixel of color appearing around resolution target elements in the extreme corners at the wide angle setting, and none at all in telephoto mode.
An up to 3.75x digital zoom is enabled by zooming to the end of the telephoto range and then pressing the up arrow (telephoto zoom button) one more time. Digital zoom extends the camera's telephoto capability to an equivalent of 405mm, but only at the lower resolution settings. (Digital Zoom works by simply cropping into the central portion of the CCD's image, increasing the apparent magnification by reducing the image size. In the case of the 4700, the maximum 3.75x digital zoom is only available at the 640x480 image size, with half that much provided for 1280x960 images, and none at all at the 2400x1800 size.)
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