Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3 review

The bottom line is that most W3 owners will need to invest in a large SDHC card and keep their entire photo libraries on the camera in order to view them in 3D. Then again, with 32GB cards available from around £30, that isn’t such an unrealistic prospect. Browsing large photo collections on the camera was surprisingly easy, thanks to a browse-by-date function and a responsive 100 thumbnail view.

The W3 improves on Fujifilm’s first 3D camera, the W1, with its ability to record 720p HD videos – in 3D once again. As with the photos, these videos looked fantastic on the 3.5in screen but they suffered even more on a 3D TV. That’s partly because of the rather noisy picture and partly because parallax adjustments were ignored on the HDMI output, but also because camera shake is particularly unpleasant in 3D. Still, with a steady hand, we were able to record some impressive 3D footage.

The downside is that the resulting files are enormous, with two 720p M-JPEG streams plus stereo uncompressed sound amounting to 6MB per second. That’s faster than many cards can write at. Our Sandisk Extreme III managed to keep up to create a 10-minute clip (the longest available) but slower cards stopped recording after anything from 50 to 13 seconds.

Fujifilm released a firmware update during the course of our tests that added an HD Economy mode, recording at 3.3MB/s. A slow SDHC card still gave up after 27 seconds but a Class 6 card kept going for 19 minutes. Fujifilm still recommends a Class 10 card for HD video, though, and that’s sensible advice.

3D video playback suffers the same limitations as photos, but we had no problems importing videos or photos into Sony Vegas Pro 10 and Magix Movie Studio Pro 17 Plus – two video editors that support 3D. We were able to use the software’s automatic and manual alignment controls to recreate the automatic parallax alignment, and output to YouTube with its nascent 3D support.

Sadly, the W3 falls short of expectations as a conventional 2D camera. We can forgive its slightly bulky design and even its lack of image stabilisation, which would be hard to achieve with twin lenses and CCDs. Battery life is more disappointing, though, and image quality is far behind what even a £100 compact camera can manage. As usual, noise is the main culprit. At ISO 100, shadows were grainy and dense textures such as hair and grass had a smudged appearance. At ISO 400 and above, photos were hopelessly smeared and blotchy. These problems plagued 3D photos just as much as 2D ones, but the 3D effect somehow disguised them. The fact that 3D photos are most likely to be viewed on the camera’s screen or a 1080p (2-megapixel) HD TV also means that limited detail levels aren’t such a problem.

At least the camera was responsive in 2D mode – with half as much image data to manipulate compared to 3D photography, shot-to-shot times fell from 3.9 to 1.9 seconds. We also appreciate how each 3D photograph is saved as two files – a JPEG and a Multi-Picture Object (MPO) file – making it easy to view photos in 2D regardless of which mode was used for capture.

3D photography and video is a niche interest, but in the W3, it’s potentially an extremely rewarding one. The 3D screen makes all the difference, allowing users to learn what does and doesn’t work in 3D as they shoot. The fact that the W3 is pretty useless as a normal 2D camera is disappointing, but at £300, we can just about forgive it being a one-trick pony. The limited playback options and the disregarded parallax data are bigger problems, but they weren’t enough to spoil our enjoyment of this camera. It’s flawed, but this is the most exciting and rewarding flawed camera we’ve seen in a long time.