Digital Cameras - Fuji MX-600 Zoom Test Images
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Outdoor portrait:
(640k) Good color and tone, although the very high-key
subject fooled the MX-600's exposure meter, as it has with just about every
digicam we've tested. Our main shot here (640k)
was shot with the exposure compensation dialed-up by 0.9 EV units, although
at that point we're starting to lose some of the strongest highlights. This
shot (640k), taken at +0.6EV compensation holds
the highlights nicely, but may appear dark on computers with higher monitor
gamma. (It looks good on typical Mac screens, but will appear fairly dark
on PC monitors.) |
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Closer portrait:
(624k) Excellent detail & exposure. Very clean,
with little noise, good detail in the hair, and almost no JPEG artifacts.
Slight contrast breaks in the skin near the eyes, probably due to the in-camera
sharpening algorithms. Overall excellent handling. |
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Indoor portrait,
flash: (620k) The MX-600Z performed very
well in this test, and we really like the ability it gives you to adjust
the flash output! While our main picture (620k)
was shot with nominal exposure, this one, with
the flash exposure set down by 0.6 EV units, and the ambient (non-flash)
exposure boosted by the maximum provides a very subtle fill-light. The result
is a very natural-looking picture, with much more subtle lighting than we're
accustomed to seeing in digicam flash shots. |
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Indoor portrait,
no flash: (624k) This shot is a tough test
of cameras' white-balance circuitry. We frequently find that digicams do
best on this particular shot using their "auto" white balance
setting, as the "incandescent" settings are often more suited
to professional lighting than household lamps. This wasn't at all the case
with the MX-600Z though: The main shot (636k)
here was taken with the "incandescent" white-balance setting,
and the exposure compensation adjusted up four steps to +1.2EV. Even the
default exposure setting (636k)
in "incandescent" mode produced a good shot, albeit a somewhat
dark one. There's a little remaing reddish cast to the image, but we found
that it cleaned up remarkably well in Photoshop, using a simple "auto
levels" adjustment. By contrast, the automatic white balance of the
'MX-600 produces a very yellowish shot, as seen here
(284k), with the exposure compensation also set to
+1.2EV. |
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House shot: (680k) Our
standard "House" poster shot is a great test of resolution and
detail rendering. The MX-600Z did very well on this shot. Detail is quite
good, very much in the running with other 1.3-1.5 megapixel cameras. Color
is good, but slightly yellowish. (This shot was taken with the white balance
set to "daylight," as the "auto" setting produced
a somewhat pinkish hue in the image.) As has become our custom on this
test, we've prepared a matrix of shots, showing the various combinations
of image size and compression ratio the MX-600Z is capable of:
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Far-Field shot: (692k)
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.
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"Musicians" poster: (668k)
Very good color, great sharpness - a very good performance on this
image! The main shot here was taken with the color balance set to "Daylight,"
as the automatic white balance setting left a rather pinkish tone, as
shown here (672k) With
the "Sunny" setting though, the color is very good, indeed.
Sharpness is also very good, as you'll see when comparing the MX-600Z
shots with others in the Comparometer(tm) (see the link at the bottom
of this page). Here again, we've shot a full set of resolution/compression
combinations, this time with examples of both daylight and automatic white
balance settings, listed in the table below.
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Macro shot: (704k)
- The MX-600Z performed very respectably on this test, solidly in the middle
range of cameras we've tested, in terms of magnification ratio, covering
a minimum area of 2.9 x 3.6 inches (74 x 92 mm), and better than many on
the basis of color rendition. (It handled the subtle green tint of the dollar
bill very well, and did an excellent job on the gold in the brooch.) This
shot (684k) shows the effect of the default flash
setting, somewhat washing-out the detail in the coin. This was a case where
the adjustable flash output came in quite handy: This
shot (704k) shows the effect of the flash exposure
being set down by -0.6 EV units. There's still strong glare from the coin,
but the overall exposure is much better. |
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"Davebox" test target: (640k) Again, the MX-600Z performed very well, showing good color balance and saturation, and good tonal range, with a surprising amount of shadow detail in the charcoal bricks. Here, we actually found almost no difference in color balance between the "auto" and "daylight" white-balance settings. The matrix below shows the effect of varying compression settings and image sizes, all show with the white balance set to "auto". The lower matrix shows the effect of the various settings for in-camera sharpening, all at the large image size.
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Low-Light Tests (NEW!)
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ISO 12233 ("WG-18") resolution target:
(635k) (Technoids only) Here again, the MX-600Z
did very well indeed, with a visual resolution of roughly 600-650 line
pairs per picture height in both vertical and horizontal directions. This
is right at the top of the current crop of 1.3-1.5 megapixel digicams.
(The MX-600 has a bit of an advantage over most megapixel-plus digicams,
in that its sensor is a true 1.5 million pixel one, vs the more common
1.3 megapixels in most units competing at the same price point.) This
show also reveals the slight barrel distortion of the MX-600's lens at
the wide angle end of its range, a parameter we've only recently begun
measuring. Barrel distortion here is 0.8%, a fairly good number for wide-angle
zooms on digicams. At the telephoto end, distortion is almost unmeasurable,
perhaps on the order of 0.1%. The tables below contain links to images
shot at both the telephoto and wide-angle ends of the zoom's range, with
the full range of image size & compression settings. Some examples
are also included showing the effects of the various "sharpness"
settings.
Wide-Angle
Sharpness Variations (All wide-angle)
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Viewfinder accuracy/flash uniformity target:
While the MX-600Z's LCD viewfinder is fairly accurate, consistently showing
89% of the final image area at both telephoto (144k) and
wide-angle (596k) focal
lengths, its optical viewfinder does considerably less well, showing only
81% at the wide-angle setting (604k),
and 77% at the telephoto end (144k).
While the smaller area shown in the viewfinder reduces the chance of inadvertently
chopping off the top of someone's head in a picture, it will also tend to
leave you with rather loose compositions, not using the available resolution
of the sensor to its best advantage. Still, looking back over our test evaluations,
if this is the worst we can find to complain about in this camera, it isn't
much! (Our viewfinder accuracy shot taken with the optical finder at the
telephoto setting did show a rotation of about 1 degree. We'll re-shoot
this image to confirm the issue, as it seems unlikely that a camera would
show viewfinder rotation at one end of the zoom, and none at the other!
Sorry too, for the over-large wide-angle files: They were inadvertently
shot at the "fine" image-quality setting.) Flash uniformity is
quite good at the wide-angle end, and excellent at the telephoto end of
the lens' range. |
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