jourdaj
Well-known member
I’ve just purchased a Fuji F30 and wanted to give my 24-hours experience w/ the camera. I bought it based on reputation: it has one of the (if not) best noise reduction for a compact camera and even compares favorably w/ DSLR’s (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilmf30/) at ISO’s greater than 200 despite its smaller CCD sensor. It also has extremely fast focusing, which is important from a digiscoping perspective. I bought it despite some of its knocks: xD Card (slower write-speeds relative to SD), rechargeable battery (NP-95 Li ion; I’d rather use AA’s) and Continuous shooting (Top/Final 3) that resets to off when reviewing or switching imaging modes. It also does not have a rotatable screen, and requires some creative homemade adaptors if one does not want to purchase a commercial model.
I’ve been wanting a camera to replace my Canon Powershot A620. I’ve gotten some wonderful images with this camera (see http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/canona620) and have been extremely happy with it, but vignetting issues, noise, and limited magnifications make it somewhat frustrating to use. Its strengths include
Custom shooting modes, and Continuous shooting that allows me to taken dozens of images in a burst w/o writing delays. The LA-DC58F adaptor also can act as a digiscoping adaptor as it fits snugly over the 20-60X Zoom eyepiece of my Zeiss 85T*Fl Diascope. With this in mind I decided to do a comparison of the two cameras to determine if I just blew $350 or lost a lot more photo opportunities by using the A620 in 2006. Check out Neil’s threads on the F30 and the Canon A640 as there are some wonderful discussions regarding both cameras. The A640 is the successor to the A620 and has been compared w/ the F30 regarding noise (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canona640/page12.asp).
Handling
In hand the F30 feels small. Its smaller/lighter than the A620 and lacks the hand-grip of the A620, which is nice to have for hand-held digiscoping. The viewscreen at 2.5” wide is larger and brighter than the A620. I use a jewelers loop as an eyepiece adaptor so the lack of a rotatable screen is not critical in my view.
I spent about an hour this morning w/ the F30 under a stereomicroscope putting the lens cover and shutters back together after I’d inadvertently pulled them off the front of the camera w/ the homemade adaptor I was trying to make (the small metal ring on the front of the lens covers the protective lens shutter and is somewhat easy to pull off). Once repaired, I fashioned a homemade adaptor using a pesto jar lid (fits snugly over the zoom eyepiece of the scope) and plastic hose clamps superglued together to center the F30 over the eyepiece. Its not ideal but a good start for allowing me the ability to do the comparison.
Vignetting
The lens on the F30 is a 3X, 8 – 24mm, 1:2.8 – 5.0 compared with the 4X, 7.3 – 29.2 mm, 1:2.8 – 4.1 A620. The smaller size, 3X zoom of the F30 makes its vignette-free at 12mm when the Zeiss eyepiece is at 20X. The camera can be zoomed out to 24mm for added magnification on the F30. Conversely, the A620 gives about 98% vignette-free imaging at 12mm/20X, but vignetting gets worse if you zoom out to 29.2mm (to the point of unabling to get a useable image). With the F30 you can get vignette-free images by increasing the Zoom eyepiece and adjusting camera zoom to give a much wider and larger magnification range compared to the A620. The A620 only works with the eyepiece at 20X and camera at 7.3-12mm, or eyepiece at 60X and camera at 7.3-8mm. All other magnifications w/ either camera or eyepiece results in heavy vignetting and poor images.
Results
Both cameras were compared under the following conditions: Aperture-priority (f/5.6) at ISO 200. Center-weighted averaging and spot-focusing, auto white-balance. Scope used was the Zeiss 85T*Fl and 20-60X zoom eyepiece. Adaptors are homemade and all images were taken hand-held. Images were taken at –1/3 eV to avoid blown highlights, and both cameras set to their highest resolution.
Beaker
This first image shows my studio model (Beaker) with the Zoom Eyepiece at 20X and both cameras at 7-8mm
http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868944. The only note here is that the Canon tended to generate faster shutter speeds relative to the Fuji (under same illumination) – I’m guessing it has to do w/ size of the center-weighted averaging. When blown up to 100% in Photoshop CS the noise difference is striking (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868943). The Fuji was much less noisy than the A620 at ISO 200. This is slightly deceiving since the F30 is slightly overexposed (so noise would be less noticeable), but still the difference is evident.
Both cameras were then zoomed to eliminate vignetting (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868945). The F30 eliminated vignetting at 12mm while the A620 still showed some vignetting at 11mm (the highest I could go before vignetting got worse). The A620 showed slightly warmer tones while the F30 (in Standard Color Mode) showed slightly cooler tones (note: F30 can be shot in Chrome mode which gives warmer tones to images). At 100% crop the A620 image was noticeably noisier.
Ring-billed Gull
I then had about 20 minutes at lunchtime to try both setups outside. Unfortunately the morning’s clear skies gave way to heavy clouds and winds of 20 mph. This was not all bad as I didn’t have to worry about glare and blown highlights, and I could compare sensor noise better in both cameras. I found a Ring-billed Gull on a lightpost and digiscoped it from about 10 meters. With the eyepiece at 20X results were similar to the studio results mentioned above. I then zoomed to 60X on the eyepiece and photographed the gull w/ the A620 at 8.5mm (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868950). Vignetting is almost eliminated, but still evident in the image. The F30 allowed me to zoom the camera to 24mm at 20X for roughly the same magnification (sorry I don’t know how these numbers translate to effective lens size or absolute magnification) and a vignette-free image. The F30 color balance is bluer (cooler) but this can be corrected easily enough in Photoshop. Noise was higher on the A620 but both images still looked acceptable despite hand-held shooting in the wind. The F30 allowed me the ability to capture the gull at a much higher magnification than I ever could w/ the A620 (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868949). The image cleaned up nicely in PS w/ a color adjustment, and selective sharpening (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868946).
The F30 not only eliminated vignetting problems associated w/ the A620 but reduces dramatically edge distortion that occurs w/ higher-zoom cameras. The edge-distortion difference is evident in these images with the F30 showing its strength (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868948).
Finally, this last image shows that the A620 is capable of taking some nice images that show respectable noise even compared w/ the F30 (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868947).
Conclusion
It’s a no-brainer. The F30 allows vignette-free digiscoping with some of best imaging available (in terms of noise). The only other camera I’ve seen perform as well is the Nikon CP8400, but price and availability make it hard to justify to the boss. The camer focuses fast, and shutter delay is practically non-existent. The Continuous shooting mode is limited to Top 3 or Final 3 frames, and there is a 5-6 second delay while the camera writes the three images to the xD card, but I may find this to be a blessing in disguise. I tend to shoot (and therefore keep) dozens of images w/ the A620 which means I fill the memory card that much faster.
I’m hoping to modify my adaptor setup so that the F30 fits more snug to the scope, so I can use things like Movie-modes and timer-delay shooting for hands-free shooting. Check out the archives for more discussions regarding this and other digiscoping cameras, and thanks for bearing w/ the long-winded review.
Jerry Jourdan
I’ve been wanting a camera to replace my Canon Powershot A620. I’ve gotten some wonderful images with this camera (see http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/canona620) and have been extremely happy with it, but vignetting issues, noise, and limited magnifications make it somewhat frustrating to use. Its strengths include
Custom shooting modes, and Continuous shooting that allows me to taken dozens of images in a burst w/o writing delays. The LA-DC58F adaptor also can act as a digiscoping adaptor as it fits snugly over the 20-60X Zoom eyepiece of my Zeiss 85T*Fl Diascope. With this in mind I decided to do a comparison of the two cameras to determine if I just blew $350 or lost a lot more photo opportunities by using the A620 in 2006. Check out Neil’s threads on the F30 and the Canon A640 as there are some wonderful discussions regarding both cameras. The A640 is the successor to the A620 and has been compared w/ the F30 regarding noise (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canona640/page12.asp).
Handling
In hand the F30 feels small. Its smaller/lighter than the A620 and lacks the hand-grip of the A620, which is nice to have for hand-held digiscoping. The viewscreen at 2.5” wide is larger and brighter than the A620. I use a jewelers loop as an eyepiece adaptor so the lack of a rotatable screen is not critical in my view.
I spent about an hour this morning w/ the F30 under a stereomicroscope putting the lens cover and shutters back together after I’d inadvertently pulled them off the front of the camera w/ the homemade adaptor I was trying to make (the small metal ring on the front of the lens covers the protective lens shutter and is somewhat easy to pull off). Once repaired, I fashioned a homemade adaptor using a pesto jar lid (fits snugly over the zoom eyepiece of the scope) and plastic hose clamps superglued together to center the F30 over the eyepiece. Its not ideal but a good start for allowing me the ability to do the comparison.
Vignetting
The lens on the F30 is a 3X, 8 – 24mm, 1:2.8 – 5.0 compared with the 4X, 7.3 – 29.2 mm, 1:2.8 – 4.1 A620. The smaller size, 3X zoom of the F30 makes its vignette-free at 12mm when the Zeiss eyepiece is at 20X. The camera can be zoomed out to 24mm for added magnification on the F30. Conversely, the A620 gives about 98% vignette-free imaging at 12mm/20X, but vignetting gets worse if you zoom out to 29.2mm (to the point of unabling to get a useable image). With the F30 you can get vignette-free images by increasing the Zoom eyepiece and adjusting camera zoom to give a much wider and larger magnification range compared to the A620. The A620 only works with the eyepiece at 20X and camera at 7.3-12mm, or eyepiece at 60X and camera at 7.3-8mm. All other magnifications w/ either camera or eyepiece results in heavy vignetting and poor images.
Results
Both cameras were compared under the following conditions: Aperture-priority (f/5.6) at ISO 200. Center-weighted averaging and spot-focusing, auto white-balance. Scope used was the Zeiss 85T*Fl and 20-60X zoom eyepiece. Adaptors are homemade and all images were taken hand-held. Images were taken at –1/3 eV to avoid blown highlights, and both cameras set to their highest resolution.
Beaker
This first image shows my studio model (Beaker) with the Zoom Eyepiece at 20X and both cameras at 7-8mm
http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868944. The only note here is that the Canon tended to generate faster shutter speeds relative to the Fuji (under same illumination) – I’m guessing it has to do w/ size of the center-weighted averaging. When blown up to 100% in Photoshop CS the noise difference is striking (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868943). The Fuji was much less noisy than the A620 at ISO 200. This is slightly deceiving since the F30 is slightly overexposed (so noise would be less noticeable), but still the difference is evident.
Both cameras were then zoomed to eliminate vignetting (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868945). The F30 eliminated vignetting at 12mm while the A620 still showed some vignetting at 11mm (the highest I could go before vignetting got worse). The A620 showed slightly warmer tones while the F30 (in Standard Color Mode) showed slightly cooler tones (note: F30 can be shot in Chrome mode which gives warmer tones to images). At 100% crop the A620 image was noticeably noisier.
Ring-billed Gull
I then had about 20 minutes at lunchtime to try both setups outside. Unfortunately the morning’s clear skies gave way to heavy clouds and winds of 20 mph. This was not all bad as I didn’t have to worry about glare and blown highlights, and I could compare sensor noise better in both cameras. I found a Ring-billed Gull on a lightpost and digiscoped it from about 10 meters. With the eyepiece at 20X results were similar to the studio results mentioned above. I then zoomed to 60X on the eyepiece and photographed the gull w/ the A620 at 8.5mm (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868950). Vignetting is almost eliminated, but still evident in the image. The F30 allowed me to zoom the camera to 24mm at 20X for roughly the same magnification (sorry I don’t know how these numbers translate to effective lens size or absolute magnification) and a vignette-free image. The F30 color balance is bluer (cooler) but this can be corrected easily enough in Photoshop. Noise was higher on the A620 but both images still looked acceptable despite hand-held shooting in the wind. The F30 allowed me the ability to capture the gull at a much higher magnification than I ever could w/ the A620 (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868949). The image cleaned up nicely in PS w/ a color adjustment, and selective sharpening (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868946).
The F30 not only eliminated vignetting problems associated w/ the A620 but reduces dramatically edge distortion that occurs w/ higher-zoom cameras. The edge-distortion difference is evident in these images with the F30 showing its strength (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868948).
Finally, this last image shows that the A620 is capable of taking some nice images that show respectable noise even compared w/ the F30 (http://www.pbase.com/jourdaj/image/72868947).
Conclusion
It’s a no-brainer. The F30 allows vignette-free digiscoping with some of best imaging available (in terms of noise). The only other camera I’ve seen perform as well is the Nikon CP8400, but price and availability make it hard to justify to the boss. The camer focuses fast, and shutter delay is practically non-existent. The Continuous shooting mode is limited to Top 3 or Final 3 frames, and there is a 5-6 second delay while the camera writes the three images to the xD card, but I may find this to be a blessing in disguise. I tend to shoot (and therefore keep) dozens of images w/ the A620 which means I fill the memory card that much faster.
I’m hoping to modify my adaptor setup so that the F30 fits more snug to the scope, so I can use things like Movie-modes and timer-delay shooting for hands-free shooting. Check out the archives for more discussions regarding this and other digiscoping cameras, and thanks for bearing w/ the long-winded review.
Jerry Jourdan
