Fuji FinePix 4900 ZoomFujifilm extends its consumer digicam, with a 6x optical zoom lens and extensive exposure controls.<<Optics :(Previous) | (Next): Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests>> Page 6:Exposure & FlashReview First Posted: 10/7/2000 |
Exposure
The 4900 Zoom offers a lot of exposure control, with Full Automatic, Program, Scene Program, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority and Manual exposure modes available. The camera's exposure mode is controlled by a mode dial on the top panel, and an icon in the top left corner of the LCD display reports the current mode setting.
Automatic exposure mode places the camera in complete control over the exposure, choosing both the shutter speed and aperture settings depending on the current light level. No options are provided for exposure compensation, ISO adjustment, or any choice of aperture. This is a pure point & shoot mode. Program mode leaves the camera in control of both shutter speed and aperture, but allows you to select from a range of equivalent exposure setting combinations. When you rotate the command dial in this mode, the camera will adjust the aperture up or down, varying the shutter speed to match and maintain the same exposure level. (We find this mode very useful when we want to gain some control over depth of field or motion blur in the subject, but don't want to have to deal with the separate aperture or shutter priority options.) Program mode also lets you control other camera settings, such as white balance and exposure compensation. Scene Program mode offers four special shooting modes: Portrait, Landscape, Sports, and Night Scene. Portrait mode blurs the background by using a larger aperture setting, keeping the subject as the primary focus. Landscape mode sets up the camera for daytime shots of scenery, using a smaller aperture setting for greater depth of field. Sports mode uses faster shutter speeds (up to 1/2,000 of a second) to capture fast moving action. Finally, Night Scene mode does just the opposite of Sports mode, using slower shutter speeds to allow more ambient light into the image. For night portraits, the Night Scene mode can be combined with the Red-Eye Reduction Plus Slow Synchronization flash mode, for natural-looking indoor photos. The other options on the mode dial offer more user control over the exposure. Shutter Priority mode allows you to control the shutter speed while the camera selects the best aperture setting. Shutter speeds in this mode can range from three to 1/1,000 seconds, with the slowest available shutter speed determined by the ISO setting (the slowest shutter speed ranges from three to 1/1.3 seconds, as the ISO is adjusted from 125 to 800). Aperture Priority works along the same lines as Shutter Priority, except that you control the aperture setting (from f/2.8 to f/11.0) while the camera selects the shutter speed. In Manual mode, you have full control over both settings, with the same range of shutter speeds available.
In all of the camera's capture modes, the LCD monitor reports the shutter speed and aperture settings on the LCD screen, if the information display has been enabled. In all three of the manually adjustable exposure modes, if the setting you select is out of the correct exposure range, that value turns red in the display. (For example, a shutter speed too fast for the available lighting, even with the lens aperture all the way open.) There's also an exposure bar that shows you the acceptable range of exposure settings for the current subject.
In all of the exposure modes except Manual, the AE Lock button on the back panel allows you to base the exposure on a specific area of the subject. You do this by framing the area of the subject you want to base the exposure on in the center of the autofocus target marks, and then pressing and holding the AE Lock button until you snap the picture. Notably, you can not only reframe the image, but zoom the lens and change the focus, as long as you continue to hold down the AE Lock button. - Think of this as a "super spot metering" mode: Suppose you have a backlit subject, such as a person with their face in shadow. With the FinePix 4900's AE Lock feature, you could actually walk up to them, get an exposure reading off their face, and then walk back to where you want to take the shot from. Alternately, you could use this in conjunction with the center-weighted metering option and the 6x zoom lens to zoom way in on the part of the picture you want to use as your exposure reference, lock the exposure, and then zoom back out to compose the shot. Overall, an incredibly useful feature! Autofocus lock works along the same lines, you just halfway press the shutter button to set focus and hold it down while you recompose the shot. Normally, autofocus and autoexposure lock are both set simultaneously, by half-pressing the shutter button. The 4900's separation of these two functions is an advanced option we've only seen on professional SLRs previously.
In any capture mode, a Preview option can be enabled through the record menu, which displays the captured image on the screen, allowing you to confirm the recording or opt to delete it.
Exposure compensation can be adjusted in the Program, Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority exposure modes, from -2 to +2 in 1/3 EV increments. (This is an offset relative to whatever exposure setting the camera has chosen, to compensate for overly bright or backlit subjects.) We liked Fuji's implementation of the exposure compensation function: As long as the viewfinder is set to show the exposure-information overlay, pressing the +/- button on the side of the lens barrel displays an exposure indicator bar showing the current exposure compensation setting. Rotating the command dial while holding down the +/- button adjusts the compensation setting, and the display updates to show the new value selected.
White balance is adjustable in all exposure modes except Scene Program and Automatic, with eight options available: Automatic, Custom (manual), Outdoors -Sunny, Outdoors-Cloudy, Daylight Fluorescent, Warm White Fluorescent, Cool White Fluorescent and Incandescent. We like the variety of fluorescent settings available, as well as the manually adjustable Custom mode, which makes the camera extremely flexible with color balance. Under the Custom setting, you simply hold a white card in front of the camera and press the Custom White Balance button on the left side of the camera to set the value. If the white card was too bright or dark, the LCD will indicate "Over" or "Under", prompting you to reset the value again.
The 4900 Zoom offers three metering modes, available in all exposure modes except for Automatic and Scene Program. The Average setting takes several readings from across the entire image and averages them to determine the proper exposure. Spot metering mode bases the exposure on the very center of the image, and Multi metering independently evaluates multiple points within the image and selects the optimum exposure based on a sophisticated algorithm. (Multi will be the best choice for most shooting conditions.)
ISO can also be manually adjusted, with options for 125, 200, 400, and 800 sensitivity equivalents. As with the metering option, ISO can be adjusted in all exposure modes except for Automatic and Scene Program. As is always the case with digicams, the higher ISO settings give increased light sensitivity, but at the cost of higher image noise, visible as "grain" in your images.
Three sharpness levels are available as well: Hard, Normal, and Soft. Hard emphasizes the edges of objects in the picture, while soft turns off all in-camera sharpening, for images you intend to manipulate post-exposure in a program such as Photoshop(tm).
The 4900 Zoom features a two and 10 second self-timer function, activated by pressing the Self-Timer button on top of the camera. The self-timer is displayed in the LCD monitor when the mode is entered, with a "2" next to the self-timer symbol to indicate the two second timer (the traditional symbol alone indicates a 10 second timer). The countdown is triggered by fully pressing the shutter button, and a red LED on the front of the camera blinks during the countdown.
Flash
A pop-up
flash is built into the 4900 Zoom, with an effective range estimated by Fujifilm
as 0.9 to 14.7 feet (0.3 to 4.5 m) or 2.9 to 13.1 feet (0.9 to 4.0m) with the
zoom set to telephoto. In our own testing of the evaluation unit Fuji sent,
we found that the flash intensity fell off significantly beyond 8-9 feet. One
explanation for this might be that the official Fuji specification for flash range
is for Auto mode, in which the camera apparently automatically increases its ISO
rating under dim lighting. We performed our testing with the ISO set to 100, which
could easily explain the shorter range we measured.Five operating modes include Automatic, Red-Eye Reduction, Forced, Slow-Synchro, and Red-Eye Reduction with Slow-Synchro. The Automatic flash mode puts the camera in charge of when to fire the flash, based on the exposure information and light level. Red-Eye Reduction also fires automatically, but flashes a quick pre-flash before firing the full flash to reduce the occurrence of the Red-Eye Effect. Forced flash simply means that the flash fires with every exposure, regardless of the light level. Slow-Synchro combines the flash with a slow shutter speed to allow more ambient light into night and twilight images. Red-Eye Reduction with Slow-Synchro simply combines the two flash modes for night portraits. To completely disable the flash, simply push it back down into its compartment. A small button on the side of the flash compartment serves as the release mechanism. The internal flash is not available in Landscape, Movie, Continuous Shooting, or Auto Bracketing shooting modes. Flash intensity can be adjusted through the record menu, from -2 to +2 in 1/3 EV increments.
A standard external flash hot shoe on top of the camera accommodates a more powerful flash unit. When an external flash is connected, the 4900 Zoom's internal flash is automatically disabled. The camera can synchronize with the external flash at any shutter speed up to 1/1,000 of a second. Additionally, the External Flash setting in the record menu must be enabled, and the camera should be in Program, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, or Manual exposure mode. The camera manual recommends shooting with either Aperture Priority or Manual exposure modes when an external flash is being used, in order to keep the lens aperture at the fixed setting required for correct exposure with the flash in use. The F4900's hot shoe is of the "plain vanilla" variety, meaning it will be compatible with the majority of shoe-mount auto flash units on the market: No fancy options such as lens-coupled zoom flash heads or through the lens metering, but the upside is that any automatic flash unit should work as well as any other.Movie Mode
Accessed through the mode dial (by turning it to the movie camera symbol), the 4900 Zoom's Movie mode captures up to 90 seconds of moving images without sound on the included 16 meg SmartMedia card, at approximately 10 frames per second. Movies are shot at a 320 x 240 pixel image size and files are saved in the Motion JPEG format. Actual recording time varies, depending on the amount of SmartMedia space available and the memory card capacity. (Fujifilm estimates that a four megabyte card can hold about 22 seconds, and a 64 megabyte card can hold up to 364 seconds.) Once in Movie mode, the lens is locked at the wide angle setting, focus is fixed at infinity, and only digital telephoto is available (up to approximately 1.88x). Shooting begins by fully pressing the shutter button, and continues until the shutter button is pressed a second time. The digital telephoto zoom can be changed during recording. Since the 4900 doesn't include a microphone though, movie files are video-only. (No sound.) Movie quality looks pretty good, with good resolution and not too many JPEG artifacts.
Continuous Shooting
A Continuous Shooting mode is available in all exposure modes except for Movie mode, and shoots up to five consecutive frames with intervals as short as 0.2 seconds. (We clocked the FinePix 4900 at 4 frames in one second, a frame rate of 4 frames per second, or 0.25 seconds per frame.) Actual shot-to-shot cycle times will vary with the amount of image information to be recorded, as well as with the image size and quality settings. If the Preview display mode is enabled, the series of images is displayed in the LCD monitor, in chronological order (pressing the Menu button records them to the memory card).
Auto Bracketing
In all of the exposure modes other than Automatic and Scene Program, an auto bracketing feature lets you take a series of exposures of the same image with different exposure settings. You can set the amount of exposure variation in the Record menu, with options of plus or minus 1/3 EV, 2/3 EV, or 1 EV. Once the exposure variable is set, the auto bracketing feature takes three exposures of the same image, one at normal exposure, one overexposed and one underexposed by the designated EV amount. If the Preview function is enabled, all three shots are displayed on the LCD monitor at once for confirmation.
Reader Comments! --> Visit our discussion forum for the Fuji FinePix 4900 Zoom!
Follow Imaging Resource: