Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Start from a bargain prosumer's camera Fujifilm S2500

Stopped by a camera shop with my friend and got a sparkling big discount on this Fujifilm camera S2500. That reminded me of the time I encouraged our Angel to get the Fujifilm S1000 at HK$1,200, and the other friend for S1500 (with 720HD) at HK$1,860 2.5 years ao. This time this one with full HD and more AI function is at HK$1,799. BTW, our angel and my other friend had some wonderful weekends on using the new toy in taking photos in Tuen Mun and Tin Shui Wai. Some very beautiful flowers they took, and they both loved their bargain buy.

When people's attention was paid at Canon, Nikon, Panasonic and Sony due to their massive media ads, there are yet some good cameras like Fujifilm's prosumer's line and Ricoh GXR line. In terms of price and the electronic parts, Fujifilm would be my recommendation. So I got one more friend to buy this camera and there it goes the journal of another photo taking. Tonight I got to try it for some night scene photo taking and see how this model can perform as compared to my Leica D-lux 3, though I know D-lux 3 is poorer in electronic parts.
1. So besides the camera itself, there are more complimentary stuff like 1 memory card, tripod and an original Fujifilm camera bag and a protective sleeve. Then the good things about this kind of camera are the bigger lens and a little bigger cmos plus the manual mode like aperture, shutter and manual exposure setting. We call it prosumer's camera, as compared to those compact camera's with a smaller sensor without manual mode setting...etc. From the manual mode, you get to know more about the basic things of photo taking - aperture, shutter speed while leaving you the standard auto and other A.I. functions from not discouraging you in trying photo taking. What's more we are talking about HK$1,799. :)
2. on D-lux 3, the cons are always the electronic part of this one and the poor ISO even when it reaches 400. This auto-mode set to ISO800, F2.8, AWB and 1/10 shutter speed, but the noise is quite serious. Yet, it tends to be whiter and bluer.
3. on S2500, auto-setting at F3.1, ISO800, AWB, 1/8. Apparently the light of the actual scene should be like this yellow. Fujifilm's CCD system boosts up the light and the color and the noise is much less.
4. on D-Lux 3, ISO800, AWB, 1/10, F2.8. As it's on F2.8, it appears with more field depth and Leica lens is of course with more clarity on the object but the noise is still poor.

5. on S2500, AWB, F3.1, 1/8. Again the noise is much better.

2 comments:

pixmation said...

What's the focal length on the S2500? Regarding the AWB feature, from a technical point of view, AWB is suppose to correct light temperature of the scene so that white object will appear to be white. In your test photos, the D-Lux is doing the job correctly. The magazine page appears to be white.

It's a matter of preference and artistic expression if one prefers the photo to be white balanced (white is white) or true to the ambient lighting especially when it comes to indoor, dust and dawn scenes.

If you prefer your photos to be faithful to the ambient lighting. Switching the White balance to "daylight" (normally is the sun icon will give you that result consistently.

in the sea said...

That really sparked me on certain things. Very true that if we look at the word "Auto White Balance". I often thought of it as it should compensate on the dim and dark. You did rectify on how this AWB should have been referred to. :)

So it simply tells the foundation knowledge of photography. That really makes me need to read more foundation books though I doubt if I will.. :) This is also my weakness part that I often disregard "reading". It's also the thing my teacher commented negatively on me during school time. :)

I often think that when we take photos, we should take what we see, but don't realise on the AWB that it should correct the lighting effect to make things look as it should be. Or in another view, we make use of the lighting effect to take what we wanna take but don't see it at the scene.

Re the focal length of this S2500, it's 5mm to 90mm (28 to 500mm on 35mm)