The low-light king of ultrazooms

The Fuji Finepix S6500FD (or S6000FD in some countries) is a fascinating camera. It looks very much like a DSLR and its build quality, manual zoom ring lens, and weight are all very SLR-like. But the S6500FD is actually classed as a prosumer ultrazoom, which is somewhere in between the ranks of your ordinary run-of-the-mill pocket Point and Shoot cameras and the entry-level DSLRs.

The camera comes with a pretty versatile lens, ranging from a good, fast, and very wide 28mm (at f/2.8) to 300mm (at f/4.9) at the telephoto end. That’s about a 10.2x zoom. The lens shows no noticeable barrel distortion, and little to no chromatic aberration throughout its range. The 28mm wide angle end is wider than average, and is very useful for squeezing in those extra people in a group photo, or for landscape photos.

Fuji promotes this camera by touting its excellent image quality at high ISO’s, and indeed, ISO performance is a definite strong point as Fuji’s 1/1.6” Super CCD sensor really shows its stuff. Images have almost no visible noise at ISO 100 and 200. Noise creeps in a bit at ISO 400, and a little more at 800 but within very reasonable levels. Noise reduction kicks in at around 1600 and 3200. The noise reduction is a little over the top, and affects detail somewhat. When shooting at these ISO’s I recommend using the camera’s RAW mode. Yes, this camera can provide images in RAW format, a rare feature amongst prosumers. For those who don’t know what this means, RAW is the format of the original image before any post-processing or noise-reduction is done within a camera. By capturing in RAW mode, you can use your computer to open the image using a RAW editor, for example Neat-image, (available free on the internet), and do a noise reduction on the image to a level of your liking. Overall, I found image quality to be quite good with sufficient sharpness and accurate colours. Fuji has every right to flaunt this camera, as it undoubtedly shows superior high ISO image quality compared with similar offerings from Canon (the S3 and S5), Panasonic (FZ18, FZ8, FZ50), and Sony (H3, H5, H7, and H9).

Zooming is accomplished by twisting the rubberised zoom ring, allowing for quick, accurate, and intuitive composing. I feel that this is a real plus over the automatic zooming mechanisms found on other ultrazooms, which can be cumbersome and will drain battery life.

Full manual controls, Shutter/Aperture priority, Programmed-Auto mode, and Full-Auto mode are available. I generally found that the camera boosted ISO to overly high levels in full Auto mode and I found myself shooting at Programmed Auto (P mode) most of the time, where ISO is controlled by the user but shutter speed and aperture is automatically selected by the camera. It’s evident that this camera is not exactly a beginner’s toy, as some understanding of photography is necessary to get the best possible image. On the other hand, this does encourage the user to really learn the art.

The camera uses 4 AA-sized batteries. With 2500MaH NiMH rechargeable batteries, I was able to shoot up to 400 shots, which is above average. I like the fact that it uses AA batteries as emergency replacements can always be got from any nearby convenience store.

The camera has a 2.5” LCD at a resolution of 235,000 pixels. The LCD display is quite clear and more than sufficient to review images. The viewfinder is an electronic LCD, as opposed to a true optical viewfinder. The EVF resolution is insufficient for proper reviewing of images, but works fine to frame the image for shooting. I generally found myself shooting using the EVF, and reviewing using the main LCD. Both the LCD and EVF brighten up for easier framing when shooting in dull conditions.

Another neat feature is face detection. The camera identifies up to 10 faces in a group, and adjusts depth of focus and exposure to an optimum level. I generally found that the face detection works quite well, and even identified faces on my TV screen when I pointed the camera towards it.

Camera performance is good. The camera takes about 1 second to start. Focusing was fast and accurate in good light, at around 1 second. The camera takes about 5 seconds in poor light using the AF lamp (which is a bright green colour). Manual focusing is also possible, but I found this to be a nuisance to use as the LCD screen was just not sharp enough to decide if the image was in focus.

All right, now for some cons: The camera has no optical image stabilization. This is a serious disadvantage especially when shooting at longer ranges, where camera shake is magnified. The user is forced to resort to high ISO’s to get sufficient shutter speed for longer ranges or situations with less than ideal lighting. While the higher ISO image quality is definitely good, if it were combined with O.I.S this camera could have been unbeatable. I feel that Fuji really miss out on an opportunity here.

The camera is also quite heavy, weighing in at 600g with batteries, and is no midget by any means. Also, the camera gives no indication as to battery levels and you will only get a warning message a few shots before the battery runs dead. Spares might be necessary if you are unsure as to how much battery life remains. Another problem I noticed was that the camera does not restart immediately after switching off. You have to wait a second or two before switching it back on again. The camera uses only XD cards, which is slightly more expensive than the popular SD format.

Despite these minor annoyances, the Fuji S6500FD is a very impressive camera, with above average image quality at high ISO levels, excellent build quality, good battery life, a 28mm wide-angle end, and mechanical zoom. I highly recommend it.