The Fuji FinePix F700 is the first 6.2 million-pixel digital camera for consumers.
Fujifilm Finepix S700 7.1MP Digital Camera with 10x Optical Zoom
Digital cameras have become a phenomenon in the photography world. They are small, easy to use and make sharing photos simple and fun.
However, one problem we’ve seen with digital is the often inferior quality of the photos. Fujifilm thinks it has the solution. The company’s proprietary Super CCD SR technology helps improve image quality and is now available in the company’s new FinePix F700. To make sure we understood this technology, Fuji took us to Japan for an in-depth look.
Digital Highlighting
If you’re an avid digital photographer, you may have noticed that the highlights and shadows of your images are never completely true to life. This is due to the camera’s limited dynamic range. (Dynamic range is simply sensitivity to light, and affects the contrast between the lightest and darkest part of your image.) This translates to images that are clear in some areas and blurry in others–especially in bright sunlight. And it tends to result in washed-out whites.
Let’s say you’re taking a digital photo of your kids in front of the Grand Canyon. Since you love those kids, you want to make sure they’re the subject of the picture, with the beautiful scenery as background. When you see the picture you realize your kids look great but the canyon is just a brown blur. Now that’s a dynamic range problem.
Fujifilm’s answer to this is the Super CCD SR (Super Dynamic Range) which is, as of this writing, the first and only 6.2 million-pixel digital camera available for the consumer market.
Double The Fun
The Super CCD SR technology doubles the number of pixels found on a typical CCD chip. It uses two types of octagonal pixels, which are arranged in what Fujifilm calls a double-honeycomb structure. Larger, high-sensitivity S-pixels sit below smaller, lower-sensitivity R-pixels.
Fuji also designed SR so that the photodiodes (particles of semiconductor material that detect light and convert it to electricity) in each pixel are bigger–which, in turn, makes the dynamic range almost four times greater than before.
The camera combines the data from both the S- and R-pixels to produce an image that lets you see your kids and the Grand Canyon clear as a bell.
To demonstrate this, our hosts at Fuji showed us images taken with a third-generation Super CCD next to ones taken with the F700 and its SR technology. One pair of images showed a woman standing in the snow. The traditional CCD image looked good, but when we put it next to the one taken with the SR, the difference was incredible. We could see every particle of snow, every bump and shadow.
Thin Is In
Another new feature is a lens that is shallower and wider than its predecessor. It sits closer to the camera, making it thinner–hence, the camera is smaller. The best part? You don’t lose any quality. The F700 also has a combined 6.6x zoom capability with a 3x optical zoom and 2.2x digital zoom.
The F700 comes bundled with an NP-40 lithium-ion battery, USB cable, hand strap, 16MB xD-Picture Card for storage, AC power adapter/battery charger and FinePixViewer 4.0 software.
