Fujifilm FinePix F50fd review

Fujifilm's F-series of compact cameras has been leading the way for quality and value for the past 18 months.

Sadly, the F50fd fails to live up to this legacy. It's an attractive camera with some impressive features, but the 12-megapixel sensor brings more problems than advantages.

Some improvements over the F40fd are welcome. The LCD screen is bigger at 2.7in, although this and the lower-capacity battery add up to a disappointing number of shots between charges. Aperture- and shutter-priority exposure modes are included, although manual and focus exposure remain absent. The updated face-detection system now recognises faces in profile as well as head on. The most exciting addition is optical image stabilisation, although its ability to keep shots blur-free at slow shutter speeds wasn't as reliable as other cameras' systems in our tests.

The F50fd's huge resolution slows things down to a pace that's unacceptable at this price. There was a three-second gap between shots in normal shooting, and the full-resolution continuous mode ran at a hopeless 0.35fps. It's particularly frustrating that camera settings can't be adjusted while photos are being saved to memory card. Picture browsing is lethargic, too, but we like the new Micro Thumbnail feature, which displays 100 photos in a 10x10 grid on the screen for quick browsing.

Colour accuracy is up to Fujifilm's usual high standards, but the detail promised by the huge resolution was lost to image noise and the camera's attempts to conceal it with digital processing. Even in bright sunlight and at low ISO speeds, noise was visible in dark parts of photos, and in our tests fine detail was lower than from Panasonic's 12-megapixel FX100 and often even the 8-megapixel FZ18. The F50fd's tendency to jump to unnecessarily high ISO settings didn't help. Given the disappointing resolution and detail, you're better off buying the FinePix F20.