Fuji FinePix E900

By Terry Sullivan
Judging a camera's value is no longer the megapixel numbers game it used to be. Consumers are starting to understand that there's a lot more to consider: zoom range, ISO, lens sharpness, shooting mode, menu structure, wireless capabilities, and so on. A perfect example is the Fuji FinePix E900 ($500 street), which offers a 9MP image sensor and a whole lot more.

The E900 is the successor to the Fuji FinePix E550, which is now about half the price of the E900. Although the E900's resolution is impressive, this light, easy-to-hold compact digital camera does more than just create big image files. For starters, it conveniently runs on two double-A batteries, features a 4X optical zoom lens with a 7.2mm-to-28.8mm range (the equivalent of a 35mm lens with a 32mm-to-128mm zoom) and corresponding maximum f-stops of f/2.8 to f/5.6. We like the 32mm end of the zoom, which begins at a wider angle than many other compacts do.

Of course, the 9MP Super CCD-HR sensor gives you large file sizes, great for large prints or doing lots of cropping. But what we really like on this compact camera is that it lets you save images directly as high-quality RAW files, a rare feature among compact point-and-shoots. RAW is now supported by Adobe Photoshop CS2's RAW plug-in as well, but you'll want to make sure you download the latest version.

In our real-world tests the E900 captured images with a very wide dynamic range, even when just shooting 8-bit JPEGs instead of 16-bit RAW files. For example, on a foggy morning, we shot a suburban landscape—trees, trash cans, parked cars, shrubs—and a sidewalk leading into the mist. We love how the camera rendered foreground objects with lots of contrast and still showed distant objects embedded in the fog. The path itself provided a test strip of sorts: It displayed a wonderful range of tones from a dark gray to a very light gray. And when you're shooting in RAW your ability to extend this dynamic range is even greater, because you're shooting in 16-bit files instead of just 8-bit.

The E900's Natural Light mode takes advantage of Fuji's Real Photo technology, which we first saw on the FinePix F10. Although we've seen this feature on other Fuji cameras, it stands out in a compact. In this mode, Fuji boosts the ISO, which gives you a better chance of stopping the action (via a quicker shutter speed). It also makes it easier to shoot without flash, which can give your portraits a more natural appearance. It's not a panacea for every low-light photo op, but in our informal, real-world tests (at our local Starbucks), our shots of people had minimal blur, and we could even read the lettering and prices on various signs and on small bags of java. With most other cameras it is hard to get a clear shot in this low-light setting.

Our lab tests showed mixed results. Our daylight shot revealed just a bit of noise, because of Fuji's Real Photo Technology, which increased the ISO and thus the noise. The color saturation was right on the money, and we were pleased there were no color casts. There was some fringing in the shot, but overall it was still quite sharp. The daylight image was well exposed, and displayed a very wide dynamic range, with a rich, dark black and pure white.

The flash coverage on our flash test shot was quite good, maybe too good, since it blew out some of the highlights. We did like the pop-up style flash mechanism, which makes it easy to suppress the flash. Our flash shots revealed a bit more of the speckled noise than we saw in the daylight test shots. As with previous Fuji cameras, this noise gave a slight softness to the images. The overall color saturation and accuracy were quite good. There was a bit less fringing in the image than in the daylight shot, though it was still noticeable. Overall we found a decent exposure with the flash, although we didn't quite get the deep, rich black we got in the daylight shot.

Because of the high-megapixel sensor, the E900 images image had a very high line counts on our resolution test: It an averaged a score of 2,000, which is the limit of what the test target allows us to read. The FinePix E900 was pretty quick, booting up in 2.4 seconds. But we are disappointed in the 4.7-second recycle time, which is very slow in today's market, and appears to carry over the same problem in recycle time that we found with the E550.

There was virtually no shutter lag. The E900 displayed very little barrel distortion and no pincushion distortion.

There are some things we think Fuji could improve upon. For instance, the 2-inch LCD could be larger and could be articulating. For video, the E900 doesn't use MPEG-4 compression for smaller file sizes, and there's no way to zoom during filming of video clips. Still, the video quality was pretty good, with nice color and sound, and minimal artifacts.

Last, we were happy to find was that Fuji didn't discard the little glass viewfinder that many camera manufacturers are taking out of their cameras. It's a great alternative when bright sunlight makes the LCD all but useless.

If you're looking for a camera that can produce great images that you can blow up to large print sizes, the FinePix E900 will not disappoint. It's our Editors' Choice for a top-quality point-and-shoot compact digital camera.

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