Good overall color and exposure, with high resolution, though image noise is slightly obtrusive.

The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many digicams, which is precisely why I set it up this way, and why I shoot it with no fill flash or reflector to open the shadows. The object is to hold both highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat" picture with muddy colors, and the F700 did an excellent job here. (This is exactly the sort of difficult subject that Fuji's "SR" SuperCCD technology was designed to deal with.)

The shot at right was taken with a +1.0 EV exposure compensation adjustment (slightly more positive compensation than average), which brightened the midtones at only a small cost in lost highlight detail. I chose the Auto white balance as the most accurate overall, though the Daylight setting produced similar results. The Manual setting resulted in a warm cast.

Skin tones are very good here, albeit just slightly warm (I've found that many people prefer slightly pink skin tones though, feeling them to be more natural-looking than a strictly accurate rendering), and the blue flowers in the bouquet are almost exactly right. (This is a very difficult blue for many digicams to get right, but the F700 pretty well nails it.) Color in the rest of the flower bouquet looks good as well, although the red flowers are just a little oversaturated. All in all, really excellent. Resolution is high, and detail is strong throughout the frame. The shadow areas show good detail as well, although there's a bit more noise in the shadows than I'd like to see.

To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.3 EV, see files F7OUTAP0.HTM through F7OUTAP4.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

Closer Portrait:

Great resolution and detail, although image noise is again a bit higher than average.

Overall color is similar to the wider shot above, and the F700's 3x zoom lens helps prevent distortion of Marti's features. The level of visible fine detail is increased in this shot, with good definition in the strands of Marti's hair as well as in her face. Details are just slightly soft overall though, and detail in shadow areas is slightly obscured by excess image noise.

Note that the slightly soft appearance of the image is characteristic of the interpolation used at the largest image sizes in Fuji's SuperCCD cameras. The effective resolution of the F700 is roughly that of a 3 megapixel camera, although its largest image files are roughly 6 megapixels in size. Interestingly, the interpolated images from SuperCCD cameras do look noticeably sharper when compared with those from cameras using conventional CCDs of similar resolution. - I venture to say that readers printing this shot and comparing it with one from a camera with a conventional 3.1 megapixel sensor would find that the print from this one would look sharper to the eye.

The shot here was taken with a +0.3 EV exposure compensation adjustment, which pushed the highlights a little, but still held detail in most of them, and produced appropriate midtone and shadow brightness levels. Shadow detail is again strong, but again with higher than average high noise.

To view the entire exposure series from -0.3 to +1.0 EV, see files F7FACAM1.HTM through F7FACAP1.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

Indoor Portrait, Flash:

Normal Flash +0.7 EV

Slow-Sync Flash +0.7 EV

Good intensity and coverage with the built-in flash. Color is a little pink from the household lighting, but still quite good overall.

The F700's built-in flash does a good job illuminating the subject here, although it did require a +0.7 EV exposure compensation adjustment for the best results. (Here's a shot at the default setting. Most cameras I test need 0.7-1.0 EV of exposure boost to expose this shot properly.) Intensity is pretty good, as is overall coverage. The relatively strong incandescent room lighting results in a magenta/orange cast on the back wall, which finds its way onto Marti's features as well. Still, overall color in the flower bouquet and in Marti's skin tones is very good. I also shot with the camera's Slow-Sync flash mode, which combines the flash with a slower shutter speed to allow more ambient light into the image. I again obtained the best results with a +0.7 EV exposure compensation adjustment, as the default exposure was too dim. Here, the color cast is stronger from the incandescent light source, with much more of an orange tint.

To view the entire exposure series from zero to +0.7 EV, see files F7INFP0.HTM through F7INFP2.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

Indoor Portrait, No Flash:

Auto White Balance

Incandescent White Balance

Manual White Balance

Best overall color with the Manual white balance, though exposure requires a lot of positive compensation.

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. The F700's Manual white balance produced the best color here, leaving just enough warmth in the image to suggest the tone of the original scene lighting. (I count this as a virtually perfect handling of this subject.) The Auto setting resulted in a visible pink cast, while the Incandescent setting produced a very warm, yellow-tinted image. (Results with the Auto setting turned out better than I'm accustomed to seeing on Fuji cameras, but I'd still like to see some improvement in Fuji's handling of incandescent lighting.) Marti's skin tone looks very good with the Manual setting, as does the rest of the color throughout the frame. The blue flowers in the bouquet are dark with slight purplish tints, but that's really pretty much unavoidable in this shot, given the very warm-hued light source. The main shot was taken with a +1.3 EV exposure compensation adjustment, which is about one notch more than what most cameras seem to require for this shot.

To view the entire exposure series at zero and from +1.0 to +2.0 EV, see files F7INMP0.HTM and F7INMP3.HTM through F7INMP6.HTM on the thumbnail index page.


ISO Series:
Noise is moderately low at the 200 ISO equivalent setting, but increases quite a bit as ISO is increased. (As you'd expect, but the F700 generally shows more image noise than most cameras I test, perhaps due in part to its minimum ISO setting of 200.) At ISO 1600, the F700's "binning" approach (which reduces resolution to 1.2 megapixels by combining the signals from groups of four sensor pixels) produces a lower-resolution, but surprisingly low-noise image. - If you can make do with 1.2 megapixel images, the F700 would be an excellent choice for shooting under very dark conditions.

ISO Series
ISO 200	ISO 400	ISO 800	ISO 1,600

House Shot:

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Manual White Balance

Good resolution, but details are a little soft on-screen. Slightly cool color balance, but still good results overall.

Though slightly cool, the F700's Manual white balance setting produced the best overall results here, despite a slight blue tint in the white house trim. By comparison, the Auto and Daylight white balance settings produced nearly identical, rather warm images. Resolution is high, with good detail in the tree limbs above the roof. The front shrubbery is quite soft however, with less definition. - As noted above, some of this is due to the interpolation Fuji uses with their SuperCCD chips in their highest-resolution mode. A moderate amount of image noise is again visible throughout the frame, in both the highlights and shadows.There's very little softness in the corners here (testimony to the quality of the F700's lens), mainly visible in the top left corner.

Far-Field Test

Good resolution, though details are just slightly soft throughout the frame. Oddly, less dynamic range than I saw in other shots.

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.

This is my ultimate "resolution shot," given the infinite range of detail in a natural scene like this, and the F700 performed pretty well, relative to its basic 3.1 megapixel spatial resolution. Resolution is high, with good detail in the tree limbs over the roof and fine foliage in front of the house, although details show the characteristic softness of maximum-resolution SuperCCD images viewed onscreen. (Print this photo out to make the most valid comparison to other 3 megapixel camera models.) Definition is pretty good, although image noise and artifacts interfere somewhat. There's just a little softness in the corners of the frame, but there's almost no chromatic aberration visible, something that's often visible in this shot, around the bits of sky peeking through the foliage in the corners.

Given how well the F700's "SR" sensor did with the strong highlights in the Outdoor Portrait shot above, I was surprised that I didn't see more detail in the strong highlight in the white-painted trim around the bay window on the front of the house in this shot. A possible explanation is that this shot is just a bit bright overall, so some shadow detail was gained at the expense of the highlights. Color is very good though. The table below shows a series of shots captured at the F700's various resolution settings, followed by ISO and sharpness series.

Resolution Series:

Wide Angle	"Fine" JPEG
2,832 x 2,128	F7FARG
2,048 x 1,536	F7FARL
1,600 x 1,200	F7FARM
1,280 x 960	F7FARS

ISO Series:

ISO Series
ISO 200	ISO 400	ISO 800	ISO 1,600

Sharpness Series:

Sharpness Series
Soft	Normal	Sharp

Lens Zoom Range

Typical 3x zoom range.

I routinely shoot this series of images to show the field of view for each camera I test, with the lens at full wide angle, at maximum telephoto (3x, in this case), and at full telephoto with the digital zoom enabled. The F700's lens is equivalent to a 35-105mm zoom on a 35mm camera. That corresponds to a moderate wide angle to a moderate telephoto. Following are the results at each zoom setting.

Musicians Poster

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Manual White Balance

Slightly warm color balance, but good resolution and detail.

This shot is often a tough test for digicams, as the abundance of blue in the composition frequently tricks white balance systems into producing a warm color balance. Though overall color is just slightly warm, skin tones with the F700's Daylight white balance setting looked the most natural to my eye. The Auto setting was warmer (doubtless a reaction to the overall blue cast of the subject), and the Manual setting seemed a little cool with bluish skin tones. The Daylight setting's slightly warm cast created purplish tints that aren't in the original image. The blue robe is a touch greenish, with only a faint purplish tint in the deep shadows. Resolution is high, with a lot of visible fine detail in the embroidery of the blue robe, though details are slightly soft and noise is moderately high.

Macro Shot

Standard Macro Shot

Macro with Flash

Somewhat better than average macro area, with good detail, but the corners are quite soft.

The F700 performed pretty well in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of 2.66 x 2.00 inches (68 x 51 millimeters). Resolution is very high, with strong detail in the printing of the dollar bill. The coins and brooch are soft due to the shallow depth of field at such short shooting distances, but still show a lot of detail. Unlike shots of more distant subjects, this test produced fairly pronounced softness in all four corners of the frame. (This is a very common failing of digicam lenses in ultra-macro shots, most likely caused by the optical phenomena called "curvature of field.") The F700's flash throttled down for the macro area quite well, but its location on the camera results in a shadow in the lower right corner and bottom portion of the screen. (Plan on using external lighting for the closest macro shots.)

"Davebox" Test Target

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Manual White Balance

Slight underexposure and a greenish color cast.

Both the F700's Auto and Daylight white balance settings produced warm color balances, with yellow casts. The Manual setting resulted in a very slight greenish cast, but had the most accurate color and white value overall. The image is slightly underexposed, resulting in a dull white value on the Macbeth chart, but the F700 distinguishes the subtle tonal variations of the Q60 target well. Colors are pretty accurate in the large color blocks of the Macbeth chart, but are a little undersaturated, particularly the subtractive primary colors of cyan, magenta, and yellow. Despite the slight underexposure, the shadow areas of the charcoal briquettes show pretty good detail, albeit with fairly high noise levels.


ISO Series:

ISO Series
ISO 200	ISO 400	ISO 800

Low-Light Tests

Pretty good low-light performance with fairly low noise at the lower ISO settings. The AF system had a little trouble at the lowest light levels though.

The F700 offers a maximum shutter time of three seconds, but a sensitivity setting as high as 1,600. In my testing, the F700 produced clear, bright, usable images down to the 1/16 foot-candle (0.67 lux) limit of my test, at the 800 and 1,600 ISO settings. At ISO 400, images were bright as low as 1/4 foot-candle (1.3 lux), though you could arguably use the image at the 1/16 foot-candle setting (though color was much warmer from the dim exposure). At ISO 200, images were bright as low as 1/2 foot-candle (2.7 lux). Since average city street lighting at night corresponds to about one foot-candle (11 lux), the F700 is quite capable of capturing bright images in slightly darker conditions. Color balance was pretty good in the brighter shots, but became quite warm as the light level decreased. The camera's AF system had a little trouble accurately gauging focus in the darker shots, despite the assistance of the AF assist lamp on the front of the camera. As a result, shots were just slightly blurry at 1/8 and 1/16 foot-candles, but sharply focused at higher light levels. Noise remained under control at ISO 200 and 400, but became high at the 800 and 1,600 settings. (As noted earlier though, the F700's ability to average-together the data from groups of 4 sensor pixels at a time means that the 1.2 megapixel images shot at ISO 1600 are actually fairly acceptable, in terms of their image noise levels.) 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

A somewhat weak flash, with low intensity even at the shortest test distance.

The F700's flash seemed to be significantly underpowered in this test. While it worked fine for my "Indoor Portrait" test above (which is shot at a distance of only 3 feet or so), in this test, it barely illuminate the test target at the minimum distance of 8 feet. This falls far short of Fuji's claimed 13 foot range with the lens at the telephoto end of its range. (I'm going to repeat this test, to confirm these results, I'm thinking that something may have been "fooling"the F700's flash-exposure sensor in this setup, because I didn't see similar problems in other shots I snapped with the flash.)

8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft	12 ft	13 ft	14 ft
1/ 60 secs F8 ISO: 200	1/ 60 secs F8 ISO: 200	1/ 60 secs F8 ISO: 200	1/ 60 secs F8 ISO: 200	1/ 60 secs F8 ISO: 200	1/ 60 secs F8 ISO: 200	1/ 60 secs F8 ISO: 200

ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test

Very high resolution, 1,300 - 1,400 lines of "strong detail." Slightly less than average barrel distortion.

The F700 performed well on the "laboratory" resolution test chart. It started showing artifacts in the test patterns at resolutions as low as 800 lines per picture height, in both horizontal and vertical directions. I found "strong detail" out to at least 1,400 lines horizontally, and perhaps 1,300 lines vertically, although you could perhaps argue for as much as another 50-100 lines higher in each direction. "Extinction" of the target patterns didn't occur until about 1,600-1,650 lines.

Optical distortion on the F700 is a little less than average at the wide-angle end, where I measured approximately 0.7 percent barrel distortion. The telephoto end fared better, as I found only 0.1 percent barrel distortion there. There's only very slight blurring in the corners from coma, and chromatic aberration is very low, since there's very little color to be found around the res target elements in the corners of the frame. (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.) Overall, the F700's lens appears to be of unusually high quality.

Resolution Series, Wide Angle

Wide Angle	"Fine" JPEG
2,832 x 2,128	F7RESWLF
2,048 x 1,536	F7RESWMF
1,600 x 1,200	F7RESWSF
1,280 x 960	F7RESWTF

Resolution Test, Telephoto

2,832 x 2,128 (Fine, Tele)

F7RESTLF

Sharpness Series

Sharpness Series
Soft	Normal	Sharp