Red Skies at Night

March 30, 2008

Mini-Review: Ricoh GX-100

Filed under: articles, reviews, ricoh, small cameras — ejeschke @ 2:32 pm
   
     

by Eric Jeschke

Last update: Mon Mar 31 08:42:22 HST 2008

(Summary of updates at the bottom of the article)

Introduction

I recently purchased a Ricoh GX-100 digital camera, because, well… I just love serious compacts, and it’s about time for a new camera. The main things I was looking for in the upgrade were a wide-angle lens, RAW mode, full manual controls, image stabilization, and a decent lens. Given the rapid introduction of camera models in this age, I’ve decided to publish my review early in the hopes that it will help anyone considering this cam, and update it as I learn more about it. The camera has already been out for around a year, so if anything this review may help some people still sitting on the fence regarding buying this camera now, or waiting for the next version, or who may be interested in picking up the GX-100 at a bargain price later.

Initial Impressions

Out of the box, the GX-100 was a little smaller than I expected, but larger in length than the Casio EX-P600 and considerably larger than the Fujifilm Finepix F31fd (you may wish to refer to both of those linked reviews to explain some of the criticism, good and bad, that I will heap upon the GX-100 in this review). It is a little too large and heavy to realistically carry in a shirt or pants pocket, although it might be at home in a cargo shorts pocket. It is certainly suitable for a coat pocket, brief case, purse or backpack. The photo of the three cameras hopefully gives some idea of the size difference.

   
     

The build seems a little flimsier than I had expected, based on Internet descriptions. The case seems to be a robust flat black metal with a nice rubberized grip, but the controls don’t work as smoothly as I would expect, and don’t give the feeling that they will take much abuse. The pop-up flash seems quite flimsy and there is the usual, barely attached rubber flap covering the USB and video out ports. Sadly, this seems to par for the course with the vast majority of digicams. At the initial street price for this camera ($600+) I would have expected more. At the price that I got it ($440), it seems grudgingly acceptable.

On the upside, I had read a few reports of “lens wobble” (i.e. the lens feels loose), but it does not seem overly so to me (mine certainly doesn’t wobble, but does move slightly if you push it). Similarly, I had read that the lens racking out and focus is (audibly) noisy, but that too, does not seem overly annoying, at least compared to my other cams, just a bit more noticeable in a very quiet place, perhaps.

There is a metal tripod socket located in a reasonable place near the center bottom of the camera. The battery/media slot door feels a bit flimsy, but does close with a reassuring click. The camera takes SD and SDHC cards up to 4GB.

The camera package includes a handy, lightweight, external charger. I picked up a spare Li-ion battery so that I wouldn’t get stuck with a dead battery while out shooting. An extremely positive feature, the camera can take two AAA batteries in a pinch, although you will want to use NiMH if at all possible, the camera is only rated for something like 30 shots on a pair of standard AAAs. Still, that the camera can take them at all in addition to the proprietary battery is impressive. Power drain will be discussed later in the article, but I’ll note here that the camera does get warm after being on for a while. Unfortunate, since that undoubtedly increases the sensor noise.

There is no built in optical viewfinder on this camera. Some may find that to be a serious omission. I do not, since it helps keep the camera size down, and I generally prefer to compose on the LCD. An accessory electronic viewfinder is available (I did not spring for it…yet), as are several options for rangefinder style optical viewfinders that plug into the hot-shoe on the camera’s top. The electronic viewfinder seems to have an even split of opinion on the internet forums as to its quality and effectiveness. The LCD is a good size (2.5 inch), is bright and very readable from reasonable angles of view. With 230,000 pixels it has good resolution as well.

Startup is decently quick for a digicam and the camera feels ready to shoot without much hesitation. Mind you, this is not a DSLR, but it’s respectable. If you’ve been shooting with a camera that has a built-in retracting lens cover (as I have), you’ll have to get used to popping off the Ricoh’s lens cap before you turn the camera on. Although the lens cap is a more solid, uncomplicated protection for the lens element, I must say I’d gotten used to the hassle-free, uncluttered convenience of having a built in lens cover. Aiding the responsiveness, the GX-100 also has the (thankfully) now-common shooting-priority image review mode, by which you can press a dedicated play button to review images, flip back and forth, zoom, etc. and then return immediately to shooting mode by simply pressing the shutter release button.

The GX-100 presents itself as a mass storage device when plugged into a USB port with the cable. This is desirable, since no special drivers are needed. It makes full use of USB 2.0 high speed transfers, so image copies go fairly quickly, although I find I get better speed from a dedicated SanDisk SD reader.

Handling and Features

   
     

The GX-100 menus are straightforward to navigate, and many users probably will not need to crack the manual to operate the camera. The camera feels comfortable to hold, the molded grip in front providing a good hand hold (but also bulking up the camera a little). Overall, the camera feels solid, and falls comfortably to the hand, with most of the controls in the right places. It is definitely easier to hold than either the EX-P600 or the F31fd, albeit at a cost of a larger package.

Although I was not overly impressed with the smoothness of the controls, I was impressed with how the adjust wheel and rocker combo controls work at changing common settings. You push in the adjust rocker on the back of the camera with your thumb, and up pops a menu of four available settings. These are user-assignable, and I’ve assigned mine to exposure compensation, ISO, white balance and AE mode. You then select the setting by nudging the rocker right or left with your thumb, followed by adjusting the setting by turning the wheel in front with your forefinger. The whole process can be done with one hand with the camera in shooting position, very much like a DSLR. Since the exposure compensation is automatically selected after the first press of the adjust rocker, it is quite fast to dial in exposure compensation, a necessary and frequent operation with this kind of camera. Dialing a wheel also seems faster and smoother than multiple button presses on the 4-way toggle, although that method will also work, if you are used to working that way. I’m sort of left wondering, however, if they couldn’t have included 5, or 6, or 10 settings on that rocker switch. I’d like to have Focus Mode on there as well as some other settings.

There is one caveat about the rocker switch. When you are in macro mode, pressing the adjust rocker puts you into an AF point selection mode. This mode is a handy one to have for the critical focus one often needs in macro work. Unfortunately, the display does not indicate that your other settings are available as well (the ones you assigned: WB, ISO, etc.) Just toggle the rocker to the left or right and you will then see the other settings. This also begs the question of how to engage focus point selection when I am in non-macro mode. Can it be done? There is nothing in the manual on that. Typically cameras that have focus point selection (e.g. the EX-P600) let you do it regardless of whether you are in macro mode or not.

The camera does have a live (shooting) histogram (a critical feature), but luminance only, no separate RGB channels. It also has a 2/3rds cross hairs for composition, a feature I use a lot. Unfortunately, Ricoh has chosen not to allow both histogram and cross hairs to used at the same time (something I do all the time on my Casio), so you are forced to choose one or the other.

One of the real pluses of the GX-100 is the two user customizable modes “MY1″ and “MY2″, which select SETTING1 and SETTING2 respectively. These modes are on the mode dial, and selecting one instantly recalls the user’s choices that have been saved for that setting. Almost any user adjustable setting on the camera can be saved to those modes, including zoom position. This sort of thing just immediately endears the user to the camera, and makes it efficient to use.

For those of us that sometimes like to work in JPEG, the camera has separately adjustable sharpness, contrast and saturation (”color depth” in Ricoh-speak) controls. These can (in fact, have to) be set for the custom user SETTING1 and SETTING2, so you need to be in “MY1″ or “MY2″ mode to use them. This is not a big limitation, as I normally shoot on these two settings. Unfortunately, they cannot be used in conjunction with B&W mode. If you choose B&W mode, you cannot adjust the contrast except in post-processing.

Lens and Focusing

   
     

The auto focus on the GX-100 is a bit slow compared to my comparable digital cameras. In fact, the occasional hunting that it does reminds me of my old Nikon Coolpix 990, a camera that is circa 2000. In 2008, I really don’t see a good reason for that, especially as this camera uses a combination of contrast and phase detection (using a separate detector on the front of the cam in addition to the CCD signal). Of course I do turn off the focus assist light, because that is incredibly annoying when photographing people. But I do the same on my Fuji F31 and it focuses much faster. That said, I’ve found the auto focus fairly reliable so far.

As a serious compact, the camera has manual focus capability, and like most cameras of this ilk, it works OK. I really wonder how big it would make the lens to have a manual focus ring (probably “fly-by-wire”) and a real, manual zoom ring. The zoom ring in particular would save a lot of power drain, and be welcomed by the class of user that buys this sort of camera. The camera also thankfully features an infinity focus setting, and (bonus!) a “snap” (hyperfocal) setting. The latter is extremely useful for street and candid photography, because there is no AF lag whatsoever, and coupled with the huge depth of field of this sensor/lens combo, you are almost guaranteed to get your subject in focus.

There is a custom “Fn” button (exactly one) on the top of the camera, that can be assigned to one of several options. The factory default is for AF/MF switching. If you have it set this way, a great feature is that you can press the shutter halfway in AF mode to lock the focus, then release the shutter button and press the Fn button to switch to manual focus and the camera will retain the focus of the focus lock. This allows you to let the camera do the initial work, and then you can fine-tune the focus (e.g. for macro work). Another press of the Fn button returns you to AF mode.

The Ricoh lens on the GX-100 is highly touted. It is tack sharp, and nicely contrasty, with very little distortion or vignetting. I haven’t used it long enough to get a feeling for chromatic aberration or purple fringing, but by other published reports it is very good in this regard. The maximum aperture is 2.5 at the wide end, and 4.4 at the long end. For this size lens, those are pretty respectable figures. The aperture is advertised as having a 7-blade design, for smooth bokeh.

The 3X zoom range is 5.1 to 15.3mm (same as 24-72 mm in 35mm equivalent terms). This wide angle is absolutely liberating on a compact camera, and something I have been wanting for a long time, since I did a lot of landscapes in 24mm with my film cameras. It’s clear the public wants more wide angle lenses on their compacts and the manufacturers are following suit, if slowly. Panasonic comes to mind as another maker who has gotten the message. Of course, it would be a more useful lens if it was a 4X, but I know there are some big trade-offs in lens design once you go this wide, and I for one would rather have a sharp 3X lens than a not as sharp 4X lens. At the long end of this zoom, 72mm is sufficient for doing portrait work, even if I have to work a little closer to my subjects than I would sometimes like.

Another really interesting and unique feature of this camera is the step zoom. On my Casio, I complained about it’s “step zoom”, in the sense that the zoom steps were too discrete, and it was difficult to zoom to exactly the crop you wanted without resorting to some footwork. Well, with the GX-100, if you enable it, there is a really discrete set of zoom steps. The difference is they are tied to known focal lengths: 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 72mm. This is different than having a zoom that isn’t quite smooth. As others have pointed out, this is really like having 5 focal length primes in your bag, because the focal length is shown on the LCD. I’ve found this feature to be really desirable, and basically leave it on all the time.

One of the negatives of the Ricoh zoom is the dreaded “digital zoom”. Most digicams have this feature, where once you zoom to the long end of the optical range, the camera will continue to zoom using “digital” zoom (i.e. cropping). I absolutely detest this feature. The bad news is that the GX-100 doesn’t let you turn it off…unless… you are shooting in RAW. I wish Ricoh could provide an option to disable it (it’s just a firmware issue, after all).

Another outstanding feature of this lens is macros. At the wide end, a 1 cm limit! And at the long end : 4 cm. This allows for some really great macro opportunities. Even though I complained earlier on the way the AF point selection was initiated, I am glad to have the feature on the camera. It is exceedingly useful with the camera on a tripod and doing macro work. I just wish Ricoh would figure out a different way to turn it on.

All in all, a very fine lens on this beast. And that translates into great image potential. I’ll mention one final negative regarding the focus. There is no facility for focus bracketing on this camera. A high-end feature, perhaps, and yes, not many other cameras of this size have it either. But my Casio EX-P600 does. And it comes in very useful sometimes, particularly with macro work. I wish the Ricoh programmers could add this to the camera’s firmware.

Sensor, Metering, Exposure and Image Quality

   
     

The GX-100 features a 1/1.75″ 10.1 megapixel CCD sensor. I wish I could say something nice about this sensor, but I can’t. The pixels are tiny, and there are more of them than there should be. It’s noisy. And the dynamic range takes a hit. And if you understand these things and accept them as the trade-offs that they are, it’s mostly good news after that. Like my EX-P600 I pretty much have to stick with ISO 80 or 100 for smooth, buttery images (even then, noise is visible at all ISOs, if you look hard for it). ISO 200 is definitely usable, but beyond that it starts to go south pretty quick. As many have pointed out, however, Ricoh takes a pretty hands off approach to noise reduction, and their “Ricoh color engine” processing leaves noise mostly showing up as luminance noise, and not so much the more objectionable chroma noise. Furthermore, you have RAW processing (DNG format–yay!) to get the best results you can with state of the art post processing tools.

The picture gets even sunnier if you are the sort that likes B&W imaging. The GX-100 noise looks quite acceptable as “grain” in B&W images, whether straight from the camera, or processed out of RAW. I have been shooting a lot more B&W this last year or so, and I think this camera is only going to encourage me farther in that direction. The B&W images really have a great, gritty look to them. That was a selling point for me, seeing all the great B&W work on the Ricoh forums around the net.

If B&W is not your bag, don’t despair. The GX-100 has great color too, with the “Ricoh look”. Fuji is also known for their great color (that’s why a lot of wedding photographers shoot with Fuij DSLRs) and I have this recurring fantasy about “what if” Ricoh, Panasonic and Casio had licensed the Fuji sensor used in my F31fd (6 mpix, 1/1.7″, great low light capability) and put it in something like the GX-100. Ah, one can dream.

One of the big pluses for me with this camera is all the options for aspect ratios. You have 4:3 (my favorite), 3:2 and even 1:1 (although 1:1 cannot be used with RAW–why?). I love the option of being able to compose and shoot square frames. A 16:9 option would be nice, pity they didn’t add that as well. Oh, and while you are at it, Ricoh, how about a panorama stitch assist?

A couple of notes on metering, a very important subject for photographers. You need to know and understand your meter, and be able to trust it. It doesn’t matter if it is “off”, so long as it is consistent about being off, and how much it is off. The GX-100 has a tendency to clip highlights, like many compacts, and while I’m still getting a handle on the metering for this cam (it takes a while), it feels like a consistent -0.3 or -0.7 EV will be dialed in most of the time (sure wish there was a -0.5 setting!). It would be nice if the GX-100 had full time, always “hot” exposure compensation buttons, like my EX-P600, because I use that a lot. Fortunately, as I described earlier, the Ricoh system is pretty efficient with the adjust rocker and the wheel at changing EV compensation. Bottom line, metering is not particularly accurate, but it is consistent, and judicious use of exposure compensation will take care of clipped highlights. This may be a good time to mention that the GX-100 has a “blinking highlights” display in playback mode, which is very useful for a quick spot check of clipping.

There are the standard AE matrix, center and spot metering modes, of which I use all three frequently. I especially like Ricoh’s analog-y “needle match” exposure indicator, which is very easy to see and understand. One absolutely “must have” feature for me is an autoexposure lock (AE) button. Fortunately, the user-customizable “Fn” button I described earlier can be set to do this, and even better, the camera retains the setting until you press the button again (perfect for stitched panoramas!). As a super bonus, if you are in manual exposure mode and press the AE lock, it causes the camera to set the exposure to the auto exposure value, from which you can then tweak it. Nice!

I will take this opportunity to complain about the location of the Fn button, which, on the top of the camera, is not in a very good location for an AE lock button. Ricoh should either add a dedicated AE button in the right spot (a la the new Sigma DP-1) or (better) add more customizable Fn buttons, some on the back of the camera. Trust me, Ricoh, users would love more Fn buttons!

The camera includes AE bracketing, perfect for doing HDR images, or just making sure you nailed the exposure, but frustratingly the bracketing only goes to +/-0.5 ev. It would be nice if one could at least go out to +/-1.0 ev.

There are the expected Auto, Manual and Aperture-priority modes, but interestingly, no Shutter-priority (what gives? I use that all the time on my other cameras). There is also a very nice Program-Shift mode, which is basically Auto, but allows you to roll the front finger wheel to scroll through all the shutter/aperture combinations for a given autoexposure calculation. This is slick, taken straight from DSLR-land, and probably reduces the need for shutter priority (although I still wonder why they omitted it). The mode dial also sports the ubiquitous “scene” modes (sports, landscape, portrait, etc), which are of little use to the enthusiast segment this camera is marketed to, but, like more megapixels, face detection, smile detection and all the other gimmicks, seems to still find its way onto “serious” compacts (thankfully the Ricoh dispenses with most of the others).

White balance controls are typical, with a manual WB option that works like you expect. There is even a WB bracketing option, although it doesn’t let you choose the amount in degrees K. That would be really useful. No, this WB bracketing just brackets by a preset amount. It still may be useful for when the WB can not be accurately determined. I haven’t really shoot enough color with this camera yet to report on the accuracy of the AWB, but I will update this when I get a better feel for it.

The GX-100 offers an “Auto-HI” sensitivity setting, which chooses a higher ISO, if possible (the upper limit can be set via a menu setting). This is a handy setting if you are shooting moving subjects in low light situations, where a higher shutter speed is preferred over the image stabilization feature, but you are working fast and don’t want to be messing about in manual mode. Unfortunately, there is no setting where one can limit the upper ISO chosen in the default “Auto” mode. This would be a very useful addition to the firmware or for a future model.

The camera is a little slow to write files, and I’m testing with a SanDisk Extreme III and JPEG. I attribute this to the camera hardware and software combo, not to the card. Much has been said in various forums about the slow RAW write speed, and a need for buffering, and I’m sure Ricoh will address this in future models. Part of that solution should be to allow the user to turn off the recording of a JPEG file in addition to the RAW–currently your choices are JPEG or JPEG+RAW. Not having to write the JPEG file will certainly speed things up a little, and save some space for the user. Major, major, kudos to Ricoh for choosing DNG as their RAW format, which instantly makes the camera’s files usable with most modern RAW image processing workflows and greatly increases the chances that the user will have to work with the RAW files well into the forseeable future.

Since I have only had the camera a short time, I can provide only a brief observation on the overall image quality. And that is, cautiously, so far I am quite pleased. I had set my expectations low, considering this was a 10.1 mpix 1/1.8″ CCD, and that was wise. Living with noise is part of living with a small sensor digicam (although I pray fervently that the DP-1 will change this and jump-start a new market segment for serious compacts). And, as many have noted, you fight the noise, or accept it and make it work for you. I think the latter zen approach is what Ricoh does with this camera, and I find myself aligned with that style of thinking.

I will update this section later with some more concrete thoughts about the IQ as I gain more experience with the camera.

Miscellaneous Aspects and Features

   
     

I generally dislike the look of flash pictures, and avoid using flash if at all possible (mostly this means I don’t have a lot of experience with flash, since I see a lot of excellent work over at The Strobist). With that disclaimer, here’s my take on the GX-100’s flash. It’s decent, and covers the basics. I’ve already mentioned that I’m not a huge fan of the flimsy pop-up design (although the visible absence of a flash on the front of the camera might make some museum person comfortable, in a pinch). The flash does cover the wide 24mm setting, which is a plus, and there are the usual settings, including my favorite use for flash: a slow-sync night scene mode. Some users have lamented on the forums about the lack of flash compensation, which is definitely a reasonable complaint for Ricoh to address in the future. No, the saving grace for the GX-100 is the presence of a real hot-shoe on the top of the camera, which opens up a world of possibilities for attached and remote flash, external viewfinders, GPS geotagging, etc.

There are a couple of settings on the camera for continuous shooting and high speed shooting. Since I almost never do any of this kind of shooting, I’m not really qualified to comment, but my casual opinion is that these basically gimmicks, because the images are small and recorded together as one large (that is to say, regular) image file. Might be useful for analyzing your golf swing or something. I doubt I’ll ever use it.

One feature that I miss on the GX-100 is a sound recorder mode. It is excellent for recording field notes when one is out shooting. Of course, you can use movie mode for this, but that wastes a lot of space for just generating an audio file. It also comes in handy for impromptu interviews, music recording, idea brainstorming, etc. The camera does have an annotation feature for photographs, and it works reasonably efficiently, but annotations are limited to 8 seconds of audio. Another request to Ricoh…audio record mode, please? That produces a WAV file? No time limit, except due to card space?

Another feature I miss frequently that I find on my other cameras is a “world date” feature; basically, this allows you to set a second timezone into the camera, and then toggle between the “world clock” and the “home clock”. This is exceedingly useful when traveling, and spares you having to reset the clock on the camera, in the case where you want to record the local time of capture in the EXIF data of the photos.

Other notable omissions: remote shutter release, either via a small wireless remote or via the a USB connection (you can use the self-timer, but it’s really no replacement), a calendar playback feature (to review photos by date–handy when traveling), a decent movie mode. You can quibble about whether some of these are necessary in a “serious compact”; I’ll argue that for this genre of camera, why not? They are there on some of the competitor’s models.

A cool, somewhat unique feature that the Ricoh does have is a built in intervalometer, allowing you to do time-lapse photography, or remote unattended photography without having to tote an extra gadget along.

A note about the image stabilization feature. Once of the selling points of this camera for me was that it features a real, CCD-moving image stabilization feature, something my other cams lack. I can report that this feature works well, and I leave it on by default. It is totally in the background and you can just set it and forget it. Reports are that it doesn’t work as well as in some other cameras. Since I have no others with this feature I can’t comment on that. But I have appreciated this capability almost immediately: I notice my hand held shots in lower light are much sharper at speeds that would give me trouble on my other cams. Thumbs up.

My initial experience with battery life is that it is only “fair”. You will definitely want to order an extra battery to have along; I’m seriously considering ordering a second spare, for 3 batteries total. The CPU and hardware are perhaps not the most efficient, compared to some other cams. I will report back my average number of pictures in an update to this post, but so far I’ve not been overly impressed,.. or depressed.

Conclusion

This is definitely a preliminary conclusion, and interested readers should check back to this section later on to see what, if anything, has changed in my opinion after using the camera for a few months. I decided to post my review early, because my experience is that if I don’t, the GX-200 (?) will be out before I have the review up. The camera has already been out for around a year, so if anything this review may help some people still sitting on the fence regarding buying this camera now, or waiting for the next version, or who may be interested in picking up the GX-100 at a bargain price later.

Overall, this is a great compact camera for the serious, thinking photographer. It is definitely not a P&S (”point and shoot”–that term is so overloaded that almost no one can look at this camera and not call it that, but you would be soooo wrong to think you could get good results from just pointing it and shooting on auto). No, this camera requires thought, but will delight the user once they have mastered it’s idiosyncrasies (true of every serious camera).

The lens is superb, the noise reduction very “hands off”, and the handling is pretty solid and ergonomic. RAW mode, image stabilization, full manual controls and good customizability (is that a word?). All in a hardy little package. Sure, there are some nit-picks in this review, but many of them are simply software (firmware) issues, and could easily be addressed by Ricoh in the future. So, without further ado, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The Good

  • Nice grip, general ergonomics, good size (although I am always looking for smaller, the Fuji F31 size really fits in a pants pocket with the same size sensor!)
  • Rocker adjust switch + wheel
  • “MY1″ and “MY2″ user-customizable modes
  • Superb lens, reasonably fast aperture, with good zoom range and excellent macro capabilities (goes wide to 24mm equivalent!)
  • Nice step-zoom mode and 1:1 aspect ratio option
  • RAW image capture in DNG
  • Full manual controls
  • Real hot-shoe
  • “Hands off” noise reduction
  • Built in intervalometer
  • Workable image stabilization

The Bad

  • Manual lens cap ( I know this is debatable, some may call it a Good)
  • Some missing things: shutter priority mode, audio recording mode, more customizable Fn buttons (or dedicated buttons for AE lock, etc), remote shutter release
  • Only fair battery life
  • AF a bit pokey (slow)
  • Cannot disable “digital zoom”
  • Write times a tad slow, especially so for RAW
  • Cannot adjust contrast or sharpness in B&W mode
  • Image quality could be better, including video (movies)
  • Digital zoom cannot be turned off except via “step zoom”.

The Ugly

  • Flimsy pieces on an otherwise solid build: the USB cover, pop-up flash, etc. I would file these under “Bad”, except that the camera was so expensive at first launch that this is inexcusable.

Things that Ricoh should improve

Here is a single list of all the things I wished for throughout this review, collected into one place, plus a couple of others.

   
     
  • Enable AF point selection in non-macro mode.
  • Add a built in neutral density filter, like the one on the Canon G9. Very useful in bright light situations.
  • Add one or two more custom function buttons, and improve the placement of the buttons (they should go on the back, where the thumb can reach them. Basically, I want an AE lock button in the right place!).
  • Provide a way to turn off “digital zoom”
  • Add focus bracketing
  • Add shutter priority mode, audio recording mode
  • Add world date setting and calendar playback mode
  • Add a user-settable upper limit to ISO in Auto ISO setting
  • Increase the possible range of EV bracketing to at least 1 stop (current limit is +/- 0.5 EV)
  • Remove the need to store a JPEG with every RAW
  • Add flash compensation
  • Allow contrast and sharpness to be used independently with B&W mode
  • Allow simultaneous use of the “thirds” composition lines and the live histogram.
  • Have the option of a histogram showing separate RGB values
  • Have a built-in lens cover (I’m still waffling on this actually)
  • Quieter operation
  • Improve AF speed
  • Provide a way to remotely control the camera (esp shutter) through USB cable or wireless remote
  • Improve file write times, buffering, esp. for RAW
  • Smoother controls (but robust!)
  • Better battery life (manual zoom alone might do it)
  • Less flimsy flash, port cover, battery door

And these are big, and possibly unreasonable wishes:

  • A larger, less noisy sensor (but only if the camera size does not increase significantly)
  • Manual zoom
  • A 4X zoom range would be nice, but only if it doesn’t decrease the sharpness of the lens significantly. Keep the wide end based at 24mm (this may be entirely unrealistic, but this is a wish list, so there it is!)

Addendum

  1. I’m aware that the review currently lacks color images. I will be adding some…
  2. Modified notes on digital zoom after a reader pointed out an error
  3. Modified notes on adjust rocker switch and AF point selection after a reader pointed out an error

June 16, 2007

Mini Review: Fujifilm Finepix F31fd

Filed under: articles, fujifilm, reviews, small cameras — ejeschke @ 11:28 pm

by Eric Jeschke

  r20070422-152426-psp-500x375.jpg  
     

Introduction

I had been hankering lately for a new compact camera. Not so much that I was dissatisfied with my old one, but it was beginning to feel a little long in the tooth (in “digicam years”). I was hearing about new features like built in image stabilization, etc. And maybe it was too long since the last toy. But the biggest rational reason for my hunger, though, was that I craved better low light performance. My hand-held indoor and low light images always suffered from slow shutter speeds necessary to shoot at the ISOs that I needed to to avoid unacceptable amounts of noise. And although they are completely affordable now, and cost is not an issue, I’m just not a big SLR user (”D-” or otherwise) anymore. I like small cameras. I like not using a viewfinder (most DSLR viewfinders suck anyway). I like silent operation. I like the unobtrusiveness.

Enter the Fujifilm Finepix F31fd (hereafter referred to as the “F31″). For months I had been reading on the net about (and seeing) F10/20/30 images. Impressive images. From a ultra-compact? The size of a deck of cards? Apparently the reason photographers are getting them in droves (often as a “DSLR companion”) is the image sensor: a 1/1.7″ Super CCD HR with 6.3 million pixels. What makes this sensor special is its low noise/high ISO performance: a good 2-3 stops better than most other digicams in this class, according to sites like dpreview. Fujifilm makes their own custom CCDs and this has given them a market advantage in sensor noise levels for small cameras.

Recently, Fujifilm introduced an updated version of the F30, the F31. Same great taste. And although it sounded like the “enthusiast features” I craved were not in this camera, on image quality it looked to be trumping the other interesting compact cameras: the Canon G7, the Panasonic LX2. Whither my favorite camera maker, Casio? Alas, they seem to have abandoned the prosumer market. Reading the tea leaves from their recent product announcements, it’s more and more megapixels, more and more noise, more and more noise reduction, less and less control. The Ricoh GX-100 had not yet been announced, or I might have gone that route.

I decided to take a gamble on the F31. After all, I’d still have my trusty P600 around. Some of the criticism, good or bad, in this review is related to my intensive use of that camera, and the inevitable comparisons. If you are interested, you follow that link to see what the F31 was up against in my mindset.

Initial Impressions

   
     

I ordered from Amazon, and the camera arrived on 03.13. The F31 takes xD cards, so I had ordered a large capacity xD card to go with the camera, as my other cameras take SD and compact flash. (Yet another format? Hmmm…mark that down under “the bad”).

Upacking and fondling the new toy, I cast a critical eye over it. Body: solid metal construction, with a few plastic pieces. Definitely looks like it could take a ding here and there. Good. Uh-oh, what’s this? Another flimsy USB cover. Have they no shame? (Why spend good money making a decent body and then slap an embarassment like that on it! Grumble.) Oh dear, a PLASTIC tripod socket?!!

Ah, but it is an ultra compact. The comparison with a deck of cards is apt: about as long and wide and a little thicker than a deck of bridge-size cards. Clearly this is camera you can take places in a normal sized pocket.

Fujifilm thoughtfully included a printed manual. It’s getting rarer. Also included in the package is a video/USB cable, the camera/computer USB cable, in-camera battery charger (what!? no external charger?) and the proprietary NiMH battery. I insert the battery, plug in the charger, and impatiently wait for the battery to charge. This seems to be a ploy to get you to read the manual…

[ Fast forward a few weeks... ]

Screen, Controls and Ergonomics

   
     

Hmm…ah, where were we? Oh yes, I was finally getting back to this web page to tell you about my experience using the camera for the last three months.

The camera turns on and extends the lens in about a second, which is pretty decent compared to similar models. Shutter lag is present, but minimal, if you have focus locked (I always prefocus). I found it quite acceptable for my style of shooting. Card write times seem on par with typical cameras in this class. I have not tested maximum continuous image taking, as I rarely use continuous mode.

Conveniently, playback mode is enabled by pressing a dedicated playback button instead of having to rotate the top dial out of shooting mode. To return to shooting mode, just lightly press the shutter button. This makes it much more convenient for chimping. Speed of flipping between shots in playback mode is decent (not quite as good as the P600, but close). There is an ergonomic image rotation mode, which lets you rotate lots of images in camera very easily during playback. I also appreciate the calendar function, that lets you browse photos by the date they were taken.

The LCD is large, high resolution and reasonably bright. When working in bright sunlight there is a “high brightness” mode that can be enabled with a touch of the 4-way controller. This is important because there is no optical viewfinder. This is not a big negative for me, because these days I generally prefer working at arms length and seeing the 100% coverage of the LCD anyway. Dropping the optical viewfinder does lead to a smaller package as well. In any case I really like the F31’s LCD, although it does seem to lack a good protective finish. It looks like it could scratch in your pocket quite easily. I had read that the LowePro Rezo 15 was the ideal accessory pouch for carrying these Fujifilm compacts and had ordered one separately–I can vouch that it fits perfectly, does protects the camera pretty well, and you can still stick it in your pocket afterwards.

The ergonomics on this camera are a little hard to judge for me. It may be that I’m just too used to my old camera, and haven’t quite had this one long enough to get used to the differences, but the controls don’t seem quite as logically and intuitively arranged to me. I’m hoping that will change as I gain more experience with it. The camera is fairly straightforward to operate. I just don’t understand why they made some of the choices they did. For example, there are two menu buttons on the back of the camera: the “F” button (a kind of quick shortcut settings button for record mode) and the “menu” button in the middle of the 4-way toggle. In the mode that I use the most, the “F” menu has selections for ISO (makes sense), quality/size (doesn’t make sense, I always leave it on maximum size) and color (doesn’t make sense, I usually shoot in normal color), while the other, fuller “menu” has the more frequently adjusted settings white balance, AF mode, and metering buried amongst all the other possible settings. Why not put the ISO/WB/AF mode/metering on the quick access “F” menu? I am also trying to get used to having the 4-way toggle turn on and off various settings in addition to its job of navigation; I find myself constantly turning on the flash or self-timer when I just wanted to navigate to something in a menu. Fujifilm could take a few notes from the Casio P600 design methinks.

A final note in regard to ergonomics. The various modes of the camera don’t always seem to operate in clearly understandable, composable, orthogonal ways. For example, “auto iso” mode is not available in aperture or shutter priority mode (you have to pick the iso manually). Various little inconsistencies like this make the various modes seem rather idiosyncratic compared to other cameras.

Lens and Focusing

   
     

The lens on the F31 is a 8-24mm, equivalent to approx 36-108mm in a 35mm camera. This is a decent range. As always, I wish it were wider on the wide end. Like 28mm. I’d give up range on the long end to get it too. How about 28-70mm, like a lot of typical SLR zoom lenses? (Of course a 4X 28-105mm would be the best). The lens is also a little slow at the long end of the range (f5.0), but this is offset by the camera’s good high ISO performance.

What’s interesting is how sharp this lens is. My P600 has a Canon made “L” lens, and I honestly didn’t expect the F31’s lens to match it, but at this point I think it may be better! It provides really tack-sharp images, that have noticeably less barrel distortion at wide angle. The lens is really one of the strong suits of this package. Others have noted that this camera does suffer some purple fringing in high contrast scenes. I have seen this, but the problem does not seem overly pronounced, and in most images/prints you won’t notice it.

Autofocus is fairly quick, and doesn’t seem to have too much trouble with hunting. There is a bright focus-assist light, which is activated if needed and which lets the camera focus in dark situations. Thankfully it can be deactivated. I turn it off most of the time because it is quite distracting when photographing people, and focus seems to lock fine without it in all but very dark situations. The F31 lacks any manual focus, unfortunately. I do find it quite handy on occasion.

The focus lock LED, which is also used to indicate exposure problems and other faults, could also benefit from a little bit better design. Sometimes a half-press of the shutter button will often complete with a beep (as if everything is fine), but the led blinks green instead of solid green. This seems to indicate that there is a problem. Fine, but is the problem with autofocus or exposure? If you investigate further there are other clues to tell you the answer, but somehow seeing that blinking green led makes me wonder whether the camera locked focus or not. It seems overloaded with a few too many fault indicators.

Of course on this kind of camera you are going to have discrete zoom steps, which means you cannot frame a shot precisely from a stationary spot as you can with a manual zoom lens. With my Casio, this really bothered me at first. I think that camera must have got me conditioned to it, because the F31 has the same issue (not enough discrete zoom steps), but it doesn’t seem to bother me as much now.

The lens focuses down to 5cm (in wide angle) for macro work, which is more respectable than my P600. However, the macro mode must be engaged when the subject distance drops down to a couple feet or so, and this seems like a rather large distance at which to have to switch to macro mode. I’ll find myself thinking that the camera autofocus can’t lock on to something and keep retrying to focus, only to finally realize that the subject is just a little too close to me and once switched to macro mode the focus locks immediately.

It would be lovely if the camera offered an infinity (hyperfocal) focus setting, but it doesn’t.

Sensor, Metering, Exposure and Image Quality

   
     

The sensor I discussed earlier: 1/1.7″ Super CCD HR, 6.3 mpix. Reportedly very low light capable. I had high expectations from what I had heard about this sensor. It didn’t disappoint. The camera has very clean images up through ISO 400. ISO 800 is quite usable and 1600 can be used in a pinch. ISO 3200 is not. I would say that the F31 is somewhere between 2 and 3 stops better than my P600, which is quite an advantage. A lot has been made of lately regarding the new image stabilization that is being built into various cameras. It’s a nice feature that can let you hand-hold the camera at lower shutter speeds by a couple stops. However, a higher ISO is more useful for all around use because it lets you keep the camera at a higher shutter speed that stops the movement of subjects in the frame.

The F31 offers 3 metering modes: multi, center and spot. Metering seems accurate–reports were that the F30 metering clips the highlights a bit and the consensus on the forums seems to be to routinely dial the exposure down 1/3 stop. For the F31 I’ve not found this to be routinely necessary, although if I do use exposure compensation on this cam it’s usually to dial it down a bit.

My biggest hurdle with this camera (and I don’t want to harp on this too much because I knew this going in), is that it lacks true manual controls. The shutter and aperture priority modes allow you to cope with subject motion and some depth of field issues, but without a true manual mode I am forced to use exposure compensation to try to tackle every tricky lighting situation (e.g. sunsets with foreground matter, contrasty scenes, etc.). Unfortunately that is a bit of a laborious process: check metered values on a part of the scene, commit to memory (mine!), recompose on desired composition, dial in (potentially lots of) exposure compensation to get the same EV, then prefocus on selected object in frame, recompose, expose. Chimp. Possibly repeat, with bracketing. Aaarrgh! If they had only added one button–an autoexposure lock button (separate from focus lock)–95% of these situations could be handled with ease. The procedure: meter the subject for the exposure you want, press the AE lock button, then focus on the OTHER subject that you want in focus, lock that with a half-press of the shutter button, finally recompose for the final composition in the frame and press the shutter the rest of the way. Dead simple. This is a feature that is sadly lacking on many of the new compact cams.

On a good note, the auto white balance is about as good as I’ve seen on a digicam. Of course it is still desirable to manually override the camera’s idea of WB on occasion (especially as this camera has no way to save a RAW file), but the auto WB is definitely a notch above other similar cameras in this class. The sensor color is not overdone (supersaturated) like on some cameras, but subtle and true to the scene. There are also “chrome” and “B&W” settings for when you are in the mood for something different straight out of the camera.

To sum up this section I would say that overall image quality is quite good. About the only defect that I see not infrequently is that I find the results a little too contrasty. This can be corrected in post-processing, of course, but I’d rather be beefing up the contrast (if necessary) rather than trying to turn it down. On the plus side this makes for great B&W conversions, which tend to look better with lots of contrast. Sharpening and noise reduction seem to be reasonably tuned, which is good because there are no settings for adjusting the contrast, sharpening or noise reduction!

Other Features and Extras

   
     

Although I don’t buy a still camera for it’s video capabilities, I find it a huge bonus if the video is decent. I hate lugging a video camera around even more than I hate lugging a DSLR around, and I’m looking forward to the day when a small camera like this will do it all. Although the video from the F31 is nowhere near that of a decent DV camera, it’s actually pretty good. 30fps at 640×480 for as long as your memory card holds out. No zoom during video, though. The camera produces motion jpeg AVI files, so they are large, and contain artifacts that you won’t see on “regular” video cameras with less heavy-handed compression. Nevertheless, I’m pretty impressed by the quality of the video (and audio). Playback on a tv through the USB/video cable is pretty nice.

Given the decent quality of the audio, it would have been nice if they provided a dedicated audio recorder feature. The F31 does have a still picture audio annotation feature (very useful at times), but it requires too many button presses and is limited to 30 seconds of audio. Still, better than none, when you need it.

A huge plus for me is that this camera is very good on battery life. It’s rated for 500+ shots per charge. I haven’t been keeping track, but it seems better than my Casio, and that camera was very good in this regard. (I’ve heard the bretheren cameras, e.g. the F20, do not do so well). With the F31 I have gone for weeks without changing batteries. I would still recommend (as always) ordering a second battery with the camera. Finding yourself in front of a great photo op with a dead proprietary battery will forever disabuse you of the notion that a single such battery will suffice.

Another feature that looks cool (although I haven’t played with it much) is wireless infrared image transfer. Apparently, if you have a compatible device (such as a friend’s F31), you can beam selected photos over to that device. This would be slick for downloading to your computer, although slower than USB. It’s somewhat annoying in this day and age that one has to plug into their laptop or desktop to download photos. It would be nice to just set the camera down next to the computer and press a button. Bluetooth, anyone?

And speaking of easier ways to transfer photos, this is my chance to complain about the F31’s shortcomings even hooking up the old-fashioned way. The camera rates it’s USB connection as a 2.0-compatible interface, but due to its use of the PTP protocol (rather than acting like a USB generic mass storage device) and the slow xD card means that image transfer is neither as fast, flexible, compatible or convenient as it could be. Nevertheless, most operating systems that have been updated with the USB signatures of the latest camera models should recognize the camera and fire up the correct application to upload the images.

   
     

The F31 has a number of “scene modes”, a feature that is quickly becoming ubiquitous, and therefore probably needs little explanation here. Most photographers will not use these modes. However, as with another feature discussed below, these can be useful if a snapshooter is borrowing your camera. Suffice it to say that these modes work reasonably well for what they are designed to do. Probably the most interesting mode of them is the “natural + flash” mode. This mode takes two pictures of a scene in quick succession, one without flash and one with. Then you can compare the two and pick the one you want.

I specifically put off discussing the F31’s “face detection” capabilities, a feature that Fujifilm marketing felt so strongly about they felt compelled to add “fd” to the model name (”F31fd” is the official model name). Mainly this is because I find this feature to be somewhat of a gimmick. Most photography enthusiasts will correctly focus on that part of the composition that they are interested in, whether that is a face, rock, flower or… whatever. They don’t need a camera to find the face in the frame. And although enthusiasts are snapping these F31’s up, it is clearly not marketed toward them. But, ahem, I digress. In a nutshell, the face detection mode works, and it works decently. You will find it useful (for example) if you ask a waiter or a tourist to take a picture of you. Put the camera in “natural light” scene mode, press the face detection button, and hand them the camera. You will have a much better than random chance that you will be in focus and have a decent exposure to boot.

Conclusion

This camera was a little of what I hoped it was, and a little of what I hoped it wasn’t. When the light is good, and it’s not a tricky exposure (i.e. straight up auto or maybe some simple exposure compensation), the camera works a charm. The lens delivers stunningly crisp photos, the colors are true, and the images are usually great right out of the camera.

   
     

It’s tricky lighting situations where this camera let’s me down–fast. Given that there is no true fully manual control of exposure, or even an autoexposure lock that you can set independent of focus lock, I am reduced in these sorts of situations to time-consuming rigamarole based on exposure compensation. This is very frustrating, to say the least.

For low-light work (but straightforward exposures) there is no comparison, the F31 is the undisputed king of the small sensor cameras. I routinely use exposures up to ISO 800, and even 1600 in a pinch. Shots up to ISO 400 are amazingly clean. Of course, tricky exposures in low-light situations will offer the same sort of frustrations.

In the end, I find myself preferring the control, ergonomics and consistent contrast of the Casio for good light photography and tricky lighting situations, but reaching for the F31 for anything from dusk to dawn, indoors, or when I need true pocketability. After seeing what a great point-and-shoot the F31 is I turned around and ordered an F20 for my wife. It reputedly uses the same lens and sensor as the F31, but retails for under $150. It has fewer modes than the F31, but offers the same image quality and most important modes, including exposure compensation. Since the F31 never really gives you full manual control anyway, it seems a compelling alternative. In fact, if I was able to do it all over again I’d probably order the F20 for myself (instead of the F31). I’ve heard Fujifilm has discontinued the F20, but old stocks continue to be moved. If you can find one they are a great bargain.

I’d love to see Fujifilm come out with a fully manual version of the F31 (in that same ultracompact form size, I know about the 6000fd!). Or for another manufacturer that is a little more ergonomically savvy to license the Super CCD HR and put it in their camera. Imagine a Casio with this sensor, or a Panasonic…ahhh, one can dream!

The Good

   
     
  • outstanding low-light performance from such a small sensor–finally a decent compact for non-flash indoor or nighttime work;
  • suprisingly sharp lens, with very little distortion;
  • auto white balance is good (better than most digicams I have used), although still benefits from manual override occasionally;
  • responsive camera (reasonably fast start up, autoexposure, shutter lag, zoom, playback) compared to many digicams;
  • takes surprisingly good video (but no zoom during video);
  • absolutely outstanding battery life, good for over 500 hundred exposures;
  • dedicated playback button with full functionality, returns to shooting mode with touch of the shutter button;
  • sized to fit even a shirt pocket!
  • easy “high-brightness” LCD mode for bright sunshine, etc;
  • world date mode (although ergonomics are poor);
  • view photos by date mode;
  • face detection works decently (but only available in fully auto modes);
  • includes printed manual (sad to say, but these days that is considered good–should just be expected);
  • cool wireless (IR) image sending feature (if you can find another device that uses this protocol);
  • durable case (with notable exceptions–see “the ugly”);

The Bad

   
     
  • limited manual controls (only exposure compensation) means time-consuming trial and error with tricky lighting situations;
  • no controls for sharpening, noise reduction or contrast;
  • lens a little slow (aperture) at long end of zoom (f5) and not wide enough (8mm (36mm equiv)) at widest;
  • awkward limit for switching to macro mode (must switch sooner than you expect);
  • no RAW mode;
  • wierd limitations on modes (e.g. auto iso is not available in aperture- or shutter-priority mode);
  • default contrast is a tad high (and no contrast adjustment);
  • voice annotation is cumbersome and limited to 30 sec;
  • Uses PTP protocol for USB connection, does not appear as general storage device (less compatible/flexible); file transfers are slower than they should be for USB 2.0
  • proprietary battery;

The Ugly

  • no dedicated autoexposure lock button (pet peeve)–this would solve many tricky exposure problems;
  • xD picture cards instead of ubiquitous SD cards;
  • extremely flimsy and poorly-designed USB/video port cover–begs to be broken off;
  • plastic tripod socket (ugh!);
  • no included external charger;

December 26, 2004

Mini-Review: Casio Exilim P600

Filed under: articles, casio, reviews, small cameras — ejeschke @ 11:26 pm

by Eric Jeschke

Introduction

Last summer I purchased a Casio Exilim P600 camera, a model which debuted somewhere around February of 2004. At the time I thought that, after a fair bit of using the camera, I ought to write up a review of the camera. It is a sign of the times that the successor model, the P700, is out in August 2004 before I managed to get this review on the web! Nevertheless, most of the features of the P700 are also in the P600 and if this review is helpful to anyone considering purchasing a P600 or P700 then it will have been worth the trouble of writing it. Oh, and by the way, this is a mini-review, meaning that I won’t go into all the details of the specifications, screens, menus and all that minutia of the camera. This is a “usability review” from a self-described “digital photography afficianado and maven”. If you are interested in other reviews or more details about the camera please visit any of the following links:

Preface

Before I jump into the meat of the review, let me first present my mindset in purchasing this particular camera, which may explain some of the criticism, good and bad, that will follow.

When I first got into digital cameras a few years ago, after many years of shooting with 35mm SLRs, I couldn’t afford a digital SLR, so I had to “make do” with a digicam. After getting used to composing on the LCD (it’s markedly similar in some respects to composing on the ground glass of a large format camera, actually), I found that I actually much preferred working that way rather than constantly scrunching a viewfinder hole up against my eye. I also began to greatly appreciate how much more often I found I had my camera with me (and returned with interesting shots), since it was small and easy to carry, and only had the one integrated zoom lens. Yes, there were frustrating limitations and image quality issues, but like any camera, I learned to work around them as best as I could.

Fast forward to today. Now that DSLRs are in the affordable price range I keep thinking I should get one, just for the excellent image quality. Whenever that thought pops in my head, another one quickly follows, reminding me how much of a drag it would be lugging around (and worrying about) a large, heavy, expensive camera or multiple lenses. I’m now firmly in the “small cameras are great” camp. At the same time, as a “serious photography enthusiast” I want to have the option of full manual control of the cameras exposure, want the best image quality I can get without sacrificing on the size issue and I appreciate features that appeal to that more sophisticated photography market segment, such as autoexposure lock, spot-metering, easy EV compensation, short shutter lag, etc. The great news is that there are digicams out there finally with the resolution, quality (with certain caveats) and fine control to please the serious digital photography enthusiast.

Casio has established a history of very compact, ergonomically-pleasing digital cameras in their Exilim model line. The top model in that line (at least in the 2nd quarter of this year) was the P600, a camera that Casio explicitly positioned at the enthusiast market segment. The following were the main advertised features that attracted me to this camera:

  • It has compact measurements (98 x 68 x 45 mm), which means it can fit comfortably in a medium size pocket such as cargo shorts. It’s still not quite small or light enough (~ 8 oz) to fit comfortably in a shirt pocket, but we’re getting there.
  • It has a 4X optical zoom, covering approximately the 33-132mm equivalent range on a 35mm camera. This is a nice range, covering medium-wide angle to just beyond portrait length. I wish it was a little wider at the bottom end–say 28 mm equivalent, but there are few small digicams that do that.
  • It has a durable looking metal finish (if a bit odd looking).
  • The camera offers 6 megapixel resolution, which means decent-sized enlargements and cropping opportunities. With the newest 6 megapixel digital cameras, we finally have an option that competes with a 35mm camera (6 megapixels being the break even point for resolution on “larger” 35mm-size enlargements, in my opinion; digital has been better on image quality alone for a while now).
  • The image quality was reputed to be very good, with low noise at “reasonable” ISOs for this sensor size and camera class (i.e. ISO 100 and below).
  • Full manual controls, and other features that cater to the “enthusiast photographer” market segment.

So the bottom line attraction was: “small but capable”. Did the P600 meet expectations? Read on!

Screen, Controls and Ergonomics

The first thing that impressed me about the P600 after using it for a while is how ergonomic the camera is for its size. Making something ergonomically pleasing is a feat in itself; making it so for a very compact camera is doubly impressive. Not that everything is perfect, but the Casio engineers have done a pretty nice job. With a camera this small you have to use care when holding it so that a stray finger doesn’t cover something up–the lens, viewfinder, an external sensor, flash, etc. You also have the problem of accidentally pushing buttons. While this camera borders on being too small to use quickly, it manages to provide a reasonable number of external controls to easily manage settings while keeping them mostly out of your finger’s path.

An enthusiast camera has lots of possible settings to tweak, and the P600 doesn’t disappoint. What’s nice is that the most important ones are easy to access and are not buried deep in submenus that require lots of button presses. Case in point: white balance, ISO, metering mode and AF area are all easily changed by pressing a prominent button on the lower left corner which pops up the four menus simultaneously on the large LCD screen. Using the four-way thumb toggle you can quickly select the appropriate value in any of the four parameters. Compared to Nikon and Canon digicams that I have used, this method is easier and more intuitive. Case in point two: a pressing the left or right toggle decrements or increments the exposure compensation, no matter what shooting mode you are in. Some settings are still buried in menu hell, but these are mostly for digital camera freebies like sepia toning and the like, which are better left to photo editor. Most of the important settings for photographers are quickly and intuitively accessible.

The LCD screen is large and bright and very usable outdoors. My only complaints about it are that for a 2 inch display they should have employed a higher pixel count–displayed photos don’t look quite as sharp as they would on a 1.5 inch display with the same resolution. Color also, seems a bit off, but only for the LCD review, not the actual images. Nevertheless, the 2 inch size makes for pleasant photo review with others looking on over your shoulder and flipping through stored snapshots is near instantaneous. There is a “preview” button, which you can press while still in shooting mode to review the last shot taken, but unfortunately you need to turn the mode dial out of shooting mode into “play” to review more than just the last image, or to zoom or pan in the image. A better design would let you press “review” and zoom and pan and flip forward or backward and then return to shooting mode with a half-press of the shutter button.

While in shooting mode the display itself can be toggled/configured in a rather large number of ways. Possibly the most interesting is a “heads up” display that shows focus distance and separate real-time RGB curves, along with the usual plethora of ISO, shutter speed, aperture, white balance, focus distance and other settings. It’s a bit cluttered, but fun to use. You can cycle through simpler views with the touch of a button. Unfortunately the LCD monitor itself is not of the tilt/swivel variety, but fixed flat on the back of the camera; thus you may find yourself getting in more awkward positions than you’d like to see the display while setting up your shot on occasion.

The P600 is fairly quick on the draw, taking just a hair over 2 seconds from power on till it is ready to shoot (most of that for extending the lens, it seems). Auto-focus is very quick and, once focus is locked, shutter lag is truly negligible. Irritatingly, the LCD screen freezes for a split second while locking focus, an annoyance mostly when tracking moving subjects. Of course this is not an issue of the viewfinder is used. Speaking of which, like most digicams of this size, the viewfinder is nothing special–it’s there and it works. Most of the time you probably won’t use it, but on occasion you’ll be glad you have the option.

Battery life is excellent; the only downside is that the camera uses proprietary batteries. The charger is small and light, the kind you plug into the wall and it hangs there. Batteries charge quickly and give you many, many shots per charge–I’ve literally shot for several weeks without changing the battery.

The fit and finish on the P600 is good. Except for few small places, like the flimsy USB port cover, the camera feels like it could take a few knocks. Image upload is fairly quick for a USB 1.1 camera with 6 megapixel files. The camera takes SD cards. I can get a little less than 200 shots on a 512MB card in Normal JPEG compression mode.

Lens and Focusing

The P600 has a pretty nice Canon-made lens: a reasonably fast f2.8-4.0 zoom that exhibits very little in the way of purple fringing or noticable distortion. The zoom is a 4X, which, at 33-132mm (35mm equivalent) gives you a pretty nice range to work with. Even better, the lens unscrews to allow you to attach several Canon-branded accessory lenses such as wide-angle and teleconverters. In order to provide a lens with such a wide zoom range on such a thin camera, Casio/Canon had to employ a double-folding lens design. It works well, but one should be cautious to avoid getting sand or grit getting between the concentric rings of the lens and interfering with the lens extension. The lens has a built-in “shutter” in the front, which opens and closes automatically, obviating the need to fumble around with a lens cap, but the mechanism does look a tad delicate.

My biggest gripe with this camera has to be the zoom control. There are just not enough discrete zoom steps. Many times while zooming it feels like I can’t stop it precisely where I want. Of course you can compensate by moving yourself, or later by cropping, but if you’re the sort that likes precise zoom framing from a stationary position you would be somewhat frustrated. On the plus side, for a non-manual zoom camera, the zoom moves in and out fairly speedily.

Auto-focus is very snappy in decent light. In low light levels it locks a little more slowly, but overall it seems quite good for a camera in this class and price range.

The P600 claims to have a macro setting, but with a closest focusing distance of 10 cm it is somewhat limiting for macro work.

Sensor, Metering, Exposure and Image Quality

Image quality is of course the main concern with any camera and I’m happy to report that the P600 does a very fine job. My last digicam (a Nikon Coolpix 990) also had a 1/1.8 sensor, and I was worried that with double the pixels (the P600 has 6 megapixels) that the noise was going to be a big issue. It’s not, at least not at “reasonable” ISOs, which for a digicam generally means around ISO 100 or less. Fortunately the P600 starts out at a very respectable ISO 50 (then 100, 200 and 400). The ISO 50 shots are surprisingly smooth and ISO 100 is decent; ISO 200 is usable in a pinch, but ISO 400 is not. Casio employs some fairly sophisticated noise reduction in camera and it works well. Very occasionally, in poor lighting fine detail is blurred a little too much by the mechanism or algorithm used, but I find that not to happen very often in the type of shooting I do.

In a related note, some shooters may be unpleasantly surprised by the P600’s unagressive sharpening; it’s a just a notch lower than most digicams at the normal setting. Those more experienced with a digital workflow will welcome the P600’s light touch here, which allows you more latitude in post-processing. It should be noted that the sharpening is definitely sufficient for great photos straight out of the camera; it’s just not overdone like on some other digicams, where you’d be very hesitant to apply any further sharpening, ever.

Color rendition is good with no noticable casts if white balance settings are used judiciously (auto white balance works fine in general, but I’ve never yet met a digicam that didn’t benefit from the photographer manually overriding the WB as appropriate).

Metering (and autoexposure based on it) is generally accurate; some reviewers have complained that the meter errs on the side of underexposure, leading to slightly dark shots. If this is true, it’s probably a good thing, because I’ve not seen many problems with blown highlights. I do use a lot of manual modes, spot metering, exposure compensation and autoexposure lock, though, and I haven’t really taken the opportunity to judge the camera on pure snapshots.

Dynamic range seems good for a sensor of this size and the camera has good tools for controlling exposure: an easily accessible auto-exposure lock button (a must have feature!), aperture-priority, shutter-priority and full manual control, quick 1/3 EV step exposure compensation and a real-time separate RGB histogram. If that’s not enough, throw in contrast and saturation adjustment, a complete range of shutter speeds from 60 to 1/2000 sec including a Bulb mode, impressive continuous shooting modes and an absolute plethora of shot bracketing options (including white balance and focus bracketing) and you begin to appreciate that this is an enthusiast’s camera and not just a P&S, although it certainly can be used for that.

For the ultimate in post-processing flexibility there is a secret raw mode that can be enabled through a special factory diagnostic menu enabled by an elaborate handshake: hold the menu and display buttons down simultaneouslu while turning on the camera, then press the right toggle twice and then the menu button again. In the resulting menu, navigate down to the #6 “image flag” submenu and select it; from that menu select “Bayer Mode” and toggle it to “On”. The camera will now take a RAW frame along with every JPEG (or TIFF) that you shoot. Clearly this is a pain in the butt, and if Casio puts the capability in the camera they should make it more accessible. (I have heard that in the P700 they disabled this “feature”–a shame).

The P600’s flash is a bit weak (guide no. 8, ISO 100), and really is only good at fairly short distances (8 feet or less?). I really dislike the look of fixed flash pictures, and avoid using on board flash whenever possible, but it’s there when you can’t do without it. There is the usual red-eye reduction feature and auto fill flash available, but apart from that there are no “advanced” flash options such as slow-sync, etc. The built in flash is also a tad slow to recharge compared to some other digicams I’ve used. Fortunately the P600 includes a standard type flash sync socket for connecting an external flash, if the need so arises.

Other Features and Extras

Other nice touches on the P600 include a “calendar” playback index that lets you find shots quickly by date, an included (tiny) wireless remote control, a “best shot” mode that has 20-plus settings for common scene (”dummy”) modes, voice annotation on shots, a standard flash sync port, a “rule of thirds” composition grid overlay, a web album generator, world time clock, alarm feature…the list goes on and on. Clearly the Casio software engineers got to have fun on this camera and just packed the features in.

Conclusion

Despite some minor flaws, the P600 delivers where it counts most for my buying criteria: an ultra compact, go anywhere camera with good ergonomics, verstatile shooting controls and impressive image quality. If you are looking for an enthusiast’s camera in a compact form factor it’s a great camera. Note to potential P700 buyers: the P600 successor, the P700, should deliver similar results, but rumor has it that Casio did away with the “unoffical RAW mode” on the P700 and also raised the starting ISO 80 (rather than 50). If so, those are unfortunate negatives relative to the P600. In terms of improvements, the P700 has 1 megapixel more resolution and a couple of other minor additions. It probably also carries a higher price tag.

Update: word has it that there is also a “secret menu” to enable RAW mode on the P700. From a post on dpreview.com:

  1. While firmly pressing down both [DISP] and [UPPER], turn the power on.
  2. After the version appears, press buttons in the order of [DOWN], [DOWN], [DISP] and [MENU] in 0.5 second. The diagnostic menu appears.
  3. Select option 6, “Image Flag”. From here you can set the Bayer mode to “on” and then use the menu button to back out of the service menu.

With Bayer Mode set to on the camera will generate 2 files for each image, a jpeg and a raw file with names like this: xxxxCIMG.RAW (10.4 MB) and CIMGxxxx.JPG (4.2 MB) (for fine compression and largest file size)

The Good
  • Very small, very light for all it’s features, yet seems solidly built (with a couple of minor exceptions, e.g. the USB port cover);
  • Good ergonomics for such a small camera, although typical compromises must be made;
  • Bright LCD is usable in sunlight;
  • Full manual control of shutter, aperture, iso and white balance, plus saturation and contrast adjustment;
  • Lots of “extras” thrown in: fancy bracketing modes, HTML albums, “heads up” display, etc.;
  • Almost non-existant shutter lag (after focus is locked);
  • Unofficially supported raw mode available;
  • Surprisingly low noise for a 6 Mpx 1/1.8 sensor at “reasonable” ISOs;
  • Accurate metering and autoexposure;
  • Lightning-fast paging through stored photos;
  • Live histogram with separate R-G-B curves;
  • Doubles as a functional audio recorder;
  • Wireless remote included;
  • Camera shows up as a USB storage device, ensuring good compatibility with a variety of OSes and applications;
  • Nice small, portable battery charger included;
  • Good battery life;
  • Good selection of “scene modes” (if you like that sort of thing);
  • Movie mode and sound recorder mode limited only by amount of space on card;
  • Good quality Canon-built 4X f2.8-4.0 lens.

The Bad

  • Large display is not as sharp as it could be due to small pixel count, and color is not accurate (the display, not the photos, which are good);
  • No separate, independent play button (play position on mode dial is inconvenient to use);
  • No tilt/twist display means awkward posturing for getting certain shots;
  • Fancy double-extending lens may have trouble with sand or grit;
  • No “official” raw mode;
  • No incremental white-balance compensation;
  • Macro mode closest focus is only 10cm;
  • Somewhat weak flash;
  • No advanced flash options (e.g. slow sync, etc.);
  • No ability to turn off noise smoothing algorithm;
  • Vignetting on widest zoom setting with large apertures;
  • No ability to lock autoexposure values in automatic modes and then switch to manual exposure, retaining aperture or shutter settings.
  • Uses USB 1.1 instead of USB 2.0;
  • Proprietary battery.

The Ugly

  • Very flimsy USB port cover and other small plastic pieces mar an otherwise robust feel;
  • Very bad location for tripod socket;
  • Too few zoom steps may require cropping or “foot zoom”;
  • LCD freezes for a split-second while locking focus.
If you are a P600 owner, there are a couple of firmware updates available from Casio which add some slight improvements. You can get them here. (Check your firmware version by holding down the menu button as you turn on the camera.

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