Got myself a new toy

[Mike W]

Well, hope it's a bit more than a toy!

Nice, shiny new Fuji E900.

Ikelite reckon their housing will be out in December, so time to play and get to know it first, but very early impressions are that it handles well and functions really positively. Hopefully get some pics from it tomorrow, and see if the hype is justified.

[Jules]

mmmmmm shiney......

[Mike W]

Yeah, except the one I got has horrible chromatic aberation, so it's going back and I'll try a second. If that's no better, money back and back to waiting.

Ho hum.

[Cussy]

That's not good news. I've also noticed what I think might be CA with my Oly 7070. When at depth, i.e. when red is lacking, and levels get adjusted I get a strong red banding down one side of the shot. Its hardly noticable, but when you know its there it sticks out like a sore-thumb. CA or a badly placed camera in housing is the only explanation I can think of. If I use Panotools to adjust for CA it isn't as bad.

So out of interest, how did you realise CA, have you got test shots?

Hope the replacement is better, can't imagine Fuji would sell a dud design.
Rob

[Mike W]

Sort of leapt out at me - I took an xD card to Jessops and shot some pics with the intention of bringing them home and looking at them on screen, and actually liked the camera and the way it handled so much I went straight back and bought it, though the buy now pay in nine months interest free credit option helped!

Anyway, shot a couple of pics this lunchtime, bunged 'em up on screen and hello nasty purple fringing, edge and centre. Real shame, the detail and smoothness of the images looks great, but if the CA is as bad on the next it's a non-starter. As you say, when you know it's there you can't ignore it.

Some pics.

This is the original Fuji pic, direct from the camera except resize and save



This is crop of the branches against the sky from the top of the shot, also from the Fuji and direct from the camera



And here is a crop from a comparison shot taken on my Olympus C5000, about a minute before the Fuji shot, and similarly cropped



Both cameras were set to aperture priority and f4, both at the standard setings for contrast, sharpening, etc, and both at the highest poss jpeg quality, giving me a 9mp 4.5mb file from the Fuji and a 5mp 1.4mb file from the Oly.

I'm willing to believe I got a really good C5000, images from it stand up well in comparison to the other halfs Canon dSLR, but even so the Fuji shots are not even close to good enough.

[Cussy]

Oh see what you mean. You can even see it in the whole big image. I've only ever noticed it when zooming right into pictures. As these compact digitals are made up of a large number of lenses I would suspect one is slightly out of line. I have a monocular that does the same, especially after I used it to project the ecllipse a few years ago! The reason for the problem was one of the prisms over-heated and warped. I'm sure a replacement will be better.
Thanks for posting, picture talks a thousand words and all...
Rob

[Mike W]

Just to finish this off - took the camera back to Jessops and tried another, no better, so got me pennies back.

So, still RAWless.

[Cussy]

Mike
I am surprised. Got your eye on anything else?
Rob

[Mike W]

Hi Rob - yeah, I was surprised as well, but after looking at some other Fuji test images from the E550 and the F810 less so.

Nothing else much catches my eye. The 7070 and 8080 have been discontinued, the new Oly SP350 is the nearest direct replacement for my C5000 and is better, but not a lot better (Except for RAW), and anything much else takes me out of PT-style housings and into Ikelite or similar, moving the set up cost from £400 - £500 to £1000 - £1200.

Truth to tell, I don't think there is a great deal of difference between the images produced by different compacts, regardless of brand or pixel count (And ignoring problems like the fringing issue), so I might even bite the bullet and go SLR.... except I'm then into even more money and size and weight and complexity and .......

[Jules]

are you sure the 7070 is discontinued? I only got mine last month

jules