Fuji FinePix S602 ZoomFuji's latest electronic SLR offers improved image quality, fast response, high ISOs, and 30 fps movies at full VGA resolution!<<Viewfinder :(Previous) | (Next): Exposure & Flash>> Page 5:OpticsReview First Posted: 4/18/2002 |
Optics
The S602 Zoom is equipped with a high quality, Super EBC Fujinon 6x zoom lens, with a 35mm equivalent range of 35-210mm. (A moderate wide angle to a pretty decent telephoto.) Aperture ranges from f/2.8 (f/3.1 with the lens at its telephoto position) to f/11, and is manually and automatically adjustable in 13 steps. Focus ranges from 1.6 feet (50 centimeters) to infinity in normal AF mode, and from 3.9 inches to 2.6 feet (10 to 80 centimeters) in Macro mode. A "Super Macro" mode focuses from 0.4 to 7.9 inches (1 to 20 centimeters), one of the closest macro ranges I've seen on a digicam. In Super Macro mode, the S602 captures an area of only 1.49 x 1.12 inches (38 x 28 millimeters). Both macro modes are accessed via the Macro button on the left side of the camera.
The S602's autofocus system operates in either AF or AF Area mode, selectable through the Setup menu. Normal AF mode ties the focus to the center of the frame. AF Area mode lets you change the autofocus area simply by holding down the One Touch AF button (in the center of the focus switch on the side of the camera) and using the arrow keys to move the focus target on the LCD screen. I've seen digicams that let you select a focusing point from one of several predefined AF areas before, but this is the first camera I've run across that lets you more or less arbitrarily control the AF area location.
In situations where you need to adjust focus quickly, the One Touch AF button speedily adjusts the focus, regardless of the focus mode.
The Focus switch on the left side of the camera alternates between auto and manual focus control. When the camera is switched over to manual, you can adjust focus by turning the ribbed focus ring at the end of the lens barrel. A pair of arrows appears on the LCD display, indicating the direction of adjustment needed, with a solid circle in the middle indicating sharp focus. (The animated screen shot at right shows that this looks like. Note the left and right green arrows that appear at the bottom of the screen when the image isn't in focus, and the green dot that appears in the final frame when it is.) You can also use the Focus Check button to enlarge the center of the frame and determine when focus is sharp. (Note that Focus Check will not work with VGA or "1M" quality settings, nor will it work when digital zoom is active or when a specific AF Area has been set.) A nice touch on S602 is that you can use the camera's AF system to set an approximate focus even when you're focusing manually, simply by pressing the One Touch AF button in the center of the manual/auto focus selector switch. This lets you get a quick approximation of your final focus, then make fine adjustments manually.
Something that I didn't see on the S602's manual focus option was any sort of distance readout. Particularly given the low light limitations of the 602's EVF, it would be nice to be able to set the focus based on an approximate distance to the subject, rather than being restricted to what you can discern from the viewfinder. I don't know whether it would be possible for Fuji's engineers to extract distance information from the combination of focus position and lens zoom setting, but it would be very handy to have an option for numerical distance readout.
One of the areas Fuji worked on for the S602 was autofocus technology. Most digicams use a pure contrast-detect autofocus approach, relying exclusively on data clocked out of the CCD to determine when the lens is focused. On the S602, Fuji uses a passive infrared system for rough focus, switching to contrast detection for fine focusing. The idea was to reduce the amount of time required for focusing, by using the faster IR system for coarse focus, and the CCD only for fine-tuning. Based on my shutter-lag tests, it appears that this approach was pretty successful, as the S602 tested faster than pretty much any other prosumer-level autofocus digicam I've examined to date. In my tests, AF time averaged only 0.80 seconds with the lens at its telephoto position, and only 0.56 seconds at wide angle. The telephoto lag time is about equal to the best AF time I've seen from most cameras with the lens in wide angle position, and the wide angle lag time is a standout compared to any camera. (These times are still a good bit slower than most film cameras, but it's a big step in the right direction.)
What the S602's hybrid AF system doesn't seem to do though, is improve low light focusing. It's an entirely passive system, in that no IR focus-assist illuminator is included, so the camera's autofocus cuts out at light levels just under 1 foot-candle (11 lux). This is about the amount of light you'll find in a typical city night scene under normal street lighting, but the camera itself can capture good-looking images under much darker conditions. (As mentioned earlier though, the EVF also has a lower light limit of around one foot-candle when the ISO is set to anything below 1600.) The S602 is a great camera, with very good low light capture ability, but it's hampered in that area by the combination of its autofocus system and the limitations of its EVF. You can work around the EVF limits somewhat (albeit with some inconvenience) by switching to ISO 1600 and then back again, but the AF limit is fairly absolute. - And would have been relatively easy to extend if an IR emitter had been included.
Despite its size, the lens on the S602 Zoom telescopes into position pretty quickly whenever the camera is turned on. A removable plastic lens cap protects the lens surface when not in use, and comes with a small strap to attach it to the camera body and prevent it from being lost. Fuji also provides a lens cap holder, which attaches to the neck strap. Two zoom buttons in the upper right corner of the rear panel control both optical and digital zoom. The 4.4x digital zoom feature increases the S602 Zoom's capabilities up to 26.4x, and is accessed by zooming past the optical zoom range with the telephoto zoom button. The amount of digital enlargement is reported in the LCD display. As with any "digital zoom" function, remember that image quality suffers from the enlargement, with sharpness decreasing in direct proportion to the degree of digital zoom. Also keep in mind that in an effort to preserve quality, the amount of digital zoom available on the S602 varies with the resolution setting. For example, no digital zoom is available at the 6.0-megapixel resolution. At 3.0-megapixels, maximum digital enlargement is 1.4x, while at 1.0-megapixels, 2.2x zoom is available. The full 4.4x digital zoom is only available for VGA resolution images.
The S602 Zoom's lens barrel has a set of 55mm filter threads, which accommodate Fuji's accessory lens kits. Both 1.5x telephoto and 0.79x wide-angle converters are available. In order for it to focus correctly, you need to tell the camera when you're using accessory optics, by selecting the Set Adapter Ring option on the Setup menu. Fuji also offers an adapter ring that accommodates a series of lens filters.
In one of the few downsides to the S602's performance, I found optical distortion
on the S602 to be quite high at the wide-angle end, with approximately 1.13
percent barrel distortion. The telephoto setting fared a little better, showing
approximately 0.51 percent pincushion distortion. Both numbers are higher than
I'm accustomed to seeing in prosumer digicam lenses, although some excuse can
be made for the 6x zoom range of the 602's lens. (Still, I'd really like to
see less geometric distortion.) On a more positive note though, chromatic aberration
was very low, showing only two or three lightly-colored pixels on either side
of the target lines. Like that of the 6900 before it, the S602's lens also shows
a fair bit of curvature of field when focusing on nearby objects. This shows
up as a noticeable corner softness in the studio shots that is largely absent
from the outdoor tests shot at greater distances.
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