Fuji Finepix F50

[Dougalsdad01]

I bought a F100FD and took it back to the shop a week later and traded it in for a F50FD. Although the F100 is advertised as having manual overide it doesn't in fact have it, whereas the F50 has (almost). I say almost because it has aperture and shutter speed priority, the former being useful in my case for use with an external (Sea&Sea YS90 Auto).

The F100 housing is considerably more bulky than the F50, it needs to be bigger to accomodate the 5-to-1 optical zoom (3-to-1 on the F50). The F100 would only just fit into my dry-suit pocket with a lot of pushing which cannot be good for the suit or housing.

As a stand-alone camera I think the F100 is great, if you want to use a strobe then it's the F50.

[aquafan]

That's great thanks Mike. I doubt I will bother now, I'll wait for a camera more for the job.

(14-11-2008 08:29 AM)Mike Ward Wrote:  Hi Aquafan - the MJU 790 doesn't have manual white balance or any manual control of shutter or aperture, so I'd say it's less than ideal, but it does have a couple of underwater scene modes that will help a bit.

If you simply want to point and shoot you'll get decent shots if stay within its limits.

[Ian]

Have a look at the review of the f100fd in "Diver" then. The BSAC reviewer in DIVE seems to be taking it from a "my first digital" perspective... I accept it's a nice point-and-shoot but comparisons to SLRs are just hilarious!!!

1) The F100 CAN'T use external lenses. The F30,31,40,50 can

2) The F100 doesn't have aperture priority or shutter priority so freezing motion and managing external flash are a nightmare. The F30,31,40,50 have this mode

3) The F30,31 have legendary low noise perfromance for a compact, which means that when used with external lenses/strobes they can achieve results that look comparable with an SLR righ under certain circumstances. The F40 and F50 have pretty good noise performance too. Most reviewers (not just diving ones!) describe the F100s low noise performance as "Poor".

I would rate the F30,31,40,50 as "exceptional" compacts for underwater use.

The F100 is average as a snapper, and crippled by the three points above for serious underwater photography.

As for the Fuji external strobe, I've dived with one of these and I would rate it as disappointing. My Epoque 150ds-alpha cost twice as much and is 100 times as good!

Ian