The F30 continues in the F10 tradition. After years of trying to hype up interest in their cameras with SuperCCD claims of 12 MPs etc But falling completely short with excess noise, Fuji has come out with a decent camera this time. This camera compares very well to the higher megapixel cameras like the Canon SD550 and the Sony W70.

Fuji succeeded in besting the previous FinePix F10 which was well liked for the quality of its high ISO upto 800 ISO images. The F30 as about a stop better in terms of image quality. So at ISO 800 the images are similar to ISO 400 images on the F10. Higher ISO increases the sensitivity of the sensor to light but at a cost of increased grain. ISO 1600 is usable, but ISO 3200 images do suffer from grainess artifacts. OK for small prints but not for prints about 8x10. However no other small point and shoot digicam offers ISO 3200 - in fact not even DSLRs like Canon 350Xd does this..

I think its closest competitors are the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01, Sony W100 and the Canon SD630 all of which are priced slightly lower than the Fuji and have some really compelling features.

Here are the PROS (Good Things)

1) It has a nice sturdy metal body, although not as sleek as and thicker than the Canon SD line.

2) Low noise upto ISO 800 although has purple fringing on some pictures.

3) Low light: Actually usable ISO 1600 settings. The ISO3200 is barely useable if you run it through neatimage. In some cases (not all) this eliminates the need for the the image stablization.

4) Very good battery life. Fuji says 500 pictures per charge...really good for this small camera. I got about 300 pictures for a charge

5) Priced very well if you take a lot of pictures in the nightclubs and parties.

6) Finally a good movie mode (at 640 x 480 and very crisp 30 fps)


Here are the CONS (BAD Things)

1) Uses those pesky SLOWWW xD cards which are harder to find, more expensive and smaller capacities than the SD cards.

2) No optical viewfinder. This will come back to haunt you in bright sunlight when the LCD gets completely washed out.

3) Really stupid design flaw of the use of a propreitary Fuji USB cable and the dock/adapter for any of the ports, including USB, A/V out, or Power. You just have to remember to carry the dock/adaptor with you at all times.

4) Hard to use menu system. Canon and Sony totally blow away this camera is ease of use menu system

5) Manual controls are better than the F10 but not as good as the Canon manual control. Not all combinations are available in all exposure modes. Fuji tries too hard to make their cameras as "idiot proof" as possible, which tends to be frustrating for more advanced shooters. Getting the settings you want takes a bit of menu changes and mode switching...but you are buying this camera for its point and shoot capabilities and not manual controls.. right !!

6) Lens is not wide-angle as compared to the Panasonic which starts out at 28 mm. The Fuji starts out at a longer 36 mm which are not very useful for wide angle work.

7) Autofocus did not work very well for me. It was slow and tended to search and then it picked the wrong points.

8) Does not have IMAGE stablization. Fuji tries to compete with Panasonic and misrepresents the camera by labeling a mode as "Picture Stabilization". However this is not an optical image stabilization system. Just a really dumb confusing mode which adjusts the ISO setting (from ISO 100 to ISO 3200) to give a shutter speed fast enough to eliminate blur due to camera shake.

9) Colors appear to be kind of "smeared". Skin tones appear to be little funny at lower ISOs and with flash. Some have an exaggeration of blues or overemphasis of orange. Some pictures are too contrasty and over-saturated, so details gets lost. Canon pictures are a lot more crisper.

10) Controls are very limited.. for example no flash power control.

11) Large Bulky AC Adaptor. Canon has a nice one which plugs right into the wall with built-in prongs.

Overall this camera depends on your needs.. if you do a lot of outdoor shooting, go for the Panasonic or the Canons.. If you do about 80% of your shooting at parties then this Fuji is for you. I stay away from any cameras from Olympus which uses the same slow hard to find xD cards.

As advertised, the sensor is incredibly sensitive in low light. You can watch the LCD with the ISO set at 3200 almost as a night vision device. Cool.

Image quality is quite good. I compared the same shot on F30 and my Nikon D50 SLR, also 6MP, at two ISO values, 1600 and 400. In both cases the Nikon was smoother of course (the sensor is much bigger), but the little Fuji, no bigger than a deck of cards, was not so inferior as one would think, quite respectable comparison.

The movie mode is excellent. 640X480 movies up to 15 min long with a 1GB card, enough for a weekend vacation if you make a series of short clips.

But whereas Fuji is good on basic functionality, the little items of daily use are annoying and indicate a poor process of designing for the user interaction. Item: the charger is set of box and cables bigger than the camera itself, hard to lug around. (Canon gives you a small blue thing into which you plug the battery, much better but an extra cost item from Fuji.) Item: requires an xD card, a hard to find proprietary format which is used only by Fuji and Olympus, and slow. You can't reuse your SD cards, the small camera standard. Very annoying. Item: the USB cable has some kind of itsy bitsy proprietary connector on the camera end, marginally smaller than the standard USB cable which works with all your other cameras and videos. Very VERY annoying, and pointless as far as making the camera smaller.

Worst is the menu and control system, which is unnecessarily complex on all the Japanese cameras (it's cultural I think) but especially odd and opaque on Fujifilm. The menu has one set of parameters and a separate little button labeled "F" (which I suppose means "especially cool little variables we are proud of") which controls some other stuff - the logic of which items go where escapes me. To use manual aperture or shutter, there is a separate mode; why not just fold this into the manual settings? There is a separate mode for "anti-shake," which turns out to mean just selecting a higher shutter speed. Unnecessary. And, the whole Scene Mode thing; how many mom an pop users actually look for the little "Fireworks" icon when Fourth of July rolls around? Useless clutter. Finally, it took me a long time to figure out how to play movies back. Bad design, and most of the choices will never ever be used.

In summary, basic performance is good, even unique. As for the user interface, at least half the diddly odd stuff should be eliminated and the rest streamlined. Fuji needs to hire the people who designed the iPod and understand simplicity.

This camera will delight the gadget lover - but your grandma will do better with something else.

I've had this camera for a week now. I have mixed feelings about it. I agree with one reviewer that this is a good camera for manual mode, or at least for semi-manual mode. The biggest problem with this camera, in my opinion, is how the ISO settings are programmed for automatic use. I don't recommend this model if you are looking for a "push here dummy (PhD)" camera.

In Fully automatic mode, camera's firmware tends to force it to try to use the higher ISO settings. This might be an effort to save on battery power by reducing the amount of flash required. The result is that pictures indoors are often taken at ISO 800 or 1600 (sometimes 3200), all which produce too much noise, even though this camera does better than others in that regard--according to the F10 reviews, anyway. I found that the camera could have done several things in fully automatic mode to enable it to take better-quality pictures: (1) it could have increased the flash power; (2) it could have opened the lens more (increased the aperture/lowered f-stop); (3) it could have reduced the shutter speed. Since the camera was billed by Fuji as being a great one for low-light situations, I guess I can't blame them too much for this programming.

To overcome this issue, I'm using semi-automatic (or semi-manual) mode. In this mode, you can tell the camera "don't use any ISO higher than 1600" or "don't use any ISO higher than 400" or "use only this ISO (one of 100/200/400/800/1600/3200)" [Those are all the choices.] I've set it to "at most ISO 400" mode and that seems to be a good indoor compromise. My indoor pictures are much better now.

Outdoor pictures have a similar problem. Whereas most PhD cameras would use ISO 80 or 100 for outdoor shots, the F30 picks 200 or more. Why? There's no need for this. The only way to fix this is to go into the semi-manual mode and tell the camera to use only ISO 100.

I will say that the low-light mode does come in handy. I was able to get excellent no-flash close-up shots in the evening outside. There's no way my old Oly could do that--there would be a flash, the foreground too bright with loss of accurate color, and the background would be black. That's where this camera (F30) excels.

Control over aperture and shutter speed (in A/S mode) is nice. Again, I think the camera could do a better job of choosing aperatures which would improve the depth of field (light permitting).

I'm not thrilled with the autofocus. In my opinion, the auto-focus is slow (yes, I have it in high-speed mode). It's also not very accurate. My 5-year old Olympus D-490 focuses as fast and with better accuracy. The F30 has a "multi" mode for autofocus, in which it attempts to find the most prominent object in the foreground. Accuracy in this mode is questionable. The decison point is often flat-out wrong.

The camera has problems with high-contrast (light/dark) transitions and shows considerable noise/fringing at those transitions. I knew from reviews that the F10 has this problem but it was not so bad, from the review pics I saw. The F30 is much worse.

Size: I don't think this is a chunky camera at all (as one reviewer described it). It's just big enough that I can work the buttons and hang onto it. It goes into my front jeans pocket just fine (I'm a male, though and I could understand that, with the tight jeans that females wear these days, the camera would not fit in a jeans pocket).

The camera's user interface is very good. I'm happy with that part. The F-button is very useful for manual-mode operation. Most operation is intuitive, or quickly becomes so.

The software that comes with the camera is just plain pathetic. I'm not going to waste my time reviewing it. I no longer use it. Oh, wait, there is one good thing: the red-eye reducer in the software is excellent.

xD is a drawback. The cards (even the Type H high-speed cards) are slower than the SD competition. Support for xD is poor among card readers (be careful and make sure your card reader will support Type M and Type H if you buy those cards). Fuji's own software "upgrade" for their own card reader (DPC-R1), to allow it to work with Type M and H cards DOES NOT WORK on Windows XP (fully updated). It merely UN-installs whatever driver you had, and then what? Nothing. Card reader will no longer work. I fortunately did the "restore" on Windows XP to get back to my original configuration. I tried the Olympus MAUSB-200 reader and it worked fine with Type H.

I was a big fan of the Finepix F10/F11 that preceded this camera. The F30 is a worthy upgrade. The new body is sleeker and more rounded, yet still feels very solid and comfortable in my hands. The large LCD is very bright with low reflection, perfect for sunny days. I don't miss an optical view finder all. The new image processor delivers the same accurate color as the F11, but with slightly less noise in the 200-400 ISO range.

Using the F30 in manual mode delivers the best results, especially when overriding the auto white balance (it's too blue in natural light) and using exposure compensation in bright sunlight. I have found image sharpness and contrast to be nearly perfect, with post processing rarely needed...except to fix the occasional purple fringing that appears in the high contrast areas of some outdoor shots.

If you want to take portraits in natural light, even indoors, and need a compact, responsive camera the F30 is a great choice.

The Fujifilm FinePix F30 and Canon SD700 are a good comparison, because they are arguably the best in this class (compact point-and-shoot cameras).

The ability to shoot at a higher ISO (3200 for F30 versus 800 for SD700) has its pros and cons. Higher ISO means higher light sensitivity, so photos can be taken in low light and not be under-exposed. The higher shutter speeds that accompany higher ISO also means that fast moving objects such as someone running can be captured without becoming blurred. The disadvantage of using high ISO is the image noise, which looks like grainy spots on a photo, and is most prevalent in low light situations. The F30 performs better than the SD700 in noise reduction. At ISO 800, photos taken on the F30 is less noisy than on the SD700. However, those same those photos taken at ISO 800 are also slightly less sharp, which is an effect of the noise reduction technology.

The SD700 has an optical image stablizer which the F30 does not have. This technology stablizes images when the photographer has a shaky hand. However, it is NOT used to capture fast moving objects, which will still be blurred. As mentioned earlier, the only way to shoot fast moving objects and have it appear motionless is to increase the shutter speed and ISO.

This brings another advantage of the F30 over the SD700. The F30 has a shutter-priority mode, which allows you to manually adjust the speed of the shutter. The SD700 shutter speed is only available through automatic pre-set, which is fine for the novice user who is not interested in creative photography. The F30 has aperture priority mode as well, which the SD700 does not have.

Ultimately, the best thing to do is to compare these cameras side by side. Otherwise, wait for the day when perhaps a camera like the F30 incorporates an optical image stabalizer, offering the best of both worlds.

i have to say that i am really surprised, really amazed about some reviewrs here comparing this camera to cameras that arent even close to its level, surprised that they have given this camera only 3 stars, youll dont have to take my word on it, just search the net enter some proffesional photography web sites and understand how advanced and smashing this camera is.
i really cant compare it to any camera out in the market, not in any terms!! just few things to make youll understand what we are talking about:
1) with its battery i was able to take almost 600 pics in one charge, no other product even comes close to these numbers.
2) the picture quality is not somthing that can be compared to any camera in the market, especially in the night or in dark situations.
3) lcd screen is better and brighter then any camera out there and it also has anti glare.
4) it has some technological features that make other brands and models seem outdated, this is the main subject i would recomend youll to read about and check into.
* i wouldnt recomend this camera to people that just want to look at the screen and shoot, this camera asks to be used manually or should i say use its manual options, if your looking for a camera where youve to just look at the screen and shoot, this isnt the one for you, look elsewhere, but if you want to use it a bit more seriously, it doesnt get better then this.

When I saw this camera written up in the New York Times a couple of months ago, I couldn't wait for it to appear on the market. I do a lot of Ballroom dancing and edit a newsletter for our local chapter of USADance. We like to include pictures of our various dances and other events in the newsletter, and of course these are often of poor quality, since dancing mostly occurs in very dim light, and the difficulty is compounded by the fact that the subjects are moving. The Finepix F30 boasted the ability to take pictures of moving subjects in poor lighting. It seemed ideal for my needs.

My camera finally arrived on Friday, June 9, and I started using it that night. The results are even better than I expected, especially since I had not had any time to study the manual before leaving for the weekly Friday evening studio "party." (I know virtually nothing about photography, although I have a fairly good eye for composition). Shots of the far end of the room clearly showed the subjects in full color with no black in the background.

A couple of weeks later, I went on a bus trip to Maine which included a boat ride. The day was misty, with no sunshine. Again, the pictures were excellent, showing no signs of motion, even thought I was on a moving boat. Shots of seals lolling on a rocky island showed the individual seals better than I could see them with the naked eye.

My next opportunity to test the camera came a couple of days later when my son and I visited my daughter with her new baby. Again, it was not a sunny day and we were in the house. I tried using the Natural/Flash setting whereby the camera will take 2 pictures in rapid succession, one with and one without the flash. The flashless shots were superior to the ones with the flash. (In fact, there seems to be hardly any circumstance that would require a flash with this camera, since most indoor pictures seem to be better using only natural light.) Also, although the baby's position and expression changed between the 2 shots each time, the pictures showed no sign of movement. I also took a short movie of the baby fussing and squirming in his little seat, which came out very well.

So far, I have noticed only a few minor annoyances with the Finepix F30: The manual is not very user-friendly and contains no index. In fact, I have learned more about using the camera from reviews by people who know photography than from the manual alone. Additionally, the playback button is not a toggle. Instead, you have to press the shutter release button to switch back to picture-taking mode. It's very easy to press this button by mistake when passing the camera around to show off a shot, and then you have to hit the playback button again and find the picture you were on. Also, the lack of an optical viewfinder means that I have to have my glasses handy to take a picture.

I can't wait to see what kind of results I get when I learn how to use the camera to its fullest!

The Finepix F30 is the first camera in its class that allows the user to take low light photographs without flash. In the outdoors, it's the first camera in its class that allows the user to take action photos on cloudy days and capture a dog in mid-leap as it grabs a frizbee in its jaws.

I truly wish people would stop lamenting over the F30s lack of "Image Stabalization." The latter doesn't help much at all in capturing real life photography. Image Stabalization is excellent for taking movies because it compensates for hand shake.

That's all it does. It is not intended to freeze movement of the subject. For that, you need high ISO sensitivity, and all of you Canon and Panasonic loving syncophants should reconcile your minds to the fact that in this area, the Finepix F30 breaks new and even hostoric ground for a camera this size.

Outdoors photography isn't always taking photos of people posing, or static landscapes. It's capturing the flight of a butterfly, or a flower waving in the wind, or a bird in flight. And in these cases, high ISO is far more important than worrying about stabalizing the shake of your hand.

In an ideal world, digital cameras would have high ISO sensitivity for enabling fast shutter speeds and Image Stabalization for that extra help against a shutter release fumble. But few things are ideal and if given the option, I wouldn't think twice in choosing the ability to use high shutter speeds with moderate aperture openings.

I've used the Finepix F30 for several weeks now as a handy take everywhere supplement to my larger cameras. I've taken some 350 photos under all conceivable circumstances, including many using flash. The battery indicator has just dropped to half, which means that Fuji's claim of some 580 shots per charge is accurate.

When set to Fine/Hard mode, colors are excellent and photos are quite sharp with virtually no noise through ISO 1600. ISO 3200 can be used in a pinch. Compare that to any other camera in of its kind.

While I prefer using an eyepiece, a refresh rate of 60 per second for the rear viewer allows comfortable use even on sunny days. I might also add that the movie mode in 640X480 is very impressive.

Finally, I don't like XD cards because of their small size. I'm 6'2" and have large hands. Bud I don't like SD cards either and prefer the 1 inch square and more substantial feel of CF cards. But you debunkers of XD technology should understand that lab tests on read/write speed are frequently misnomers. True usable speed is based on the interaction of the memory card and the electronics of the camera. And in this context, I've found that the F30 writes at about average speed.

As for autofocus, the F30 is blazingly fast. Anyone who claims otherwise is showing a bit of prejudice.

The Finepix F30 is with little doubt, the best all around camera of its kind. There is nothing like it for "real life" photography.

The F30 is a pleasure to use. It is an excellent performer in many regards. I rated it 5 stars because I think its the best P&S camera in the market today. I'll start with the good points.

1. Start-up and focusing is very quick for a P&S. Fast performance.
2. Manual controls are very nice to have in a cam this size (A/S priority mode + Custom White Balance).
3. Noise control up to ISO800 is excellent, very acceptable at 1600 (NR is at work when viewed 100% - but that is the same as printing the image about 4 ft wide, very good results at ISO1600 even up to an 8 X 10 print), and 3200 is fine for 4 x 6 prints but not much bigger.
4. Excellent movie mode.
5. That lens! Oh my, this is easily the sharpest lens Ive seen on a compact camera, plus it has an EBC coating, what that does it eliminate lens flare (very useful very extreme contrast situations). I am very impressed by the piece of glass on this camera.
6. The battery life is the best there is on compact P&S. Period.
7. The camera has good ergonomics, I like the rounded design compared to its predescessor the F10, and the rubber grips on the back of the cam really provide the ability to get a decent grip (I was able to get a 1/5 second handheld shot, never was able to do that with any other cam I own). The dedicated EV button is great and I quite like the menu system, ISO is the first item under the F menu, and the other other are easily accesable in the main menu.
8. LCD screen is excellent, very sharp, very bright and has an anti-glare coating for bright light (in fact too bright, I turned it down to -2 for more accurate reproduction of the image captured, plus a button for quick brightness in extreme situations). Plus, 60FPS view-mode, very very smooth indeed, excellent for action shots.
9. AF-Illuminator, very bright and doesnt try to use it all the time like the Canon Elphs do but only when the camera decides it really requires it.
10. The flash metering system (I-flash). Works quite well, doesnt overexpose the foreground and uses a high ISO to also preserve the background lighting which results in an evenly exposed image. (though it tries to go up to ISO 800 too often IMO, in that case there are two auto ISO schemes (400 & 1600) set to 1600 and youll still preserve background and have better detail.
11. Excellent edge-to-edge sharpness, no vignetting, no corner softness at all, a big issue with my two prior cams (Minolta and Canon Elph).
12. The Fuji colors are excellent. The F30 (like many Fuji's) produces very natural looking images, the colors are not oversaturated like they are in many P&S cameras.

This camera is easily the best P&S camera I have had the pleasure of using, though of course it does have it cons (all cameras do unfortunately).
Here are my main gripes

1. The camera suffers from purple fringing, though my last two cameras did so as-well and that is the only detriment with regards to image-quality, its not very noticable when printed but in cases of extreme contrast you can see it when viewed 100% on screen. Though there are workarounds, first adjusting aperture and EV and choosing Shade WB (which produces, nice warm colors) helps a lot. Also, removing PF is pretty easy with post-processing too. So not a huge detriment at all really.
2. Continous-shooting is a mixed bag. Top 3 and Final 3 are good modes but the long-continous mode is slow (about the same as my Minolta).
3. Somewhat large aperture required at full zoom (f/5 to be precise, so this somewhat causes you to resort to higher ISO's in low-light, thankfully the camera has excellent high-ISO for a compact (currently unmatched).
4. Deleting an image is pretty slow compared to my old cameras. This may be due to XD cards, Im not sure, XD cards are somewhat a burden, but their costs have declined greatly recently (1GB Card for about $40 online).

Thats about it, I find the camera a pleasure to use and Im more than pleased with the results from it and while it is the king of low-light shooters among P&S's what striked me equally as much is the overall performance (speedy focus and startup performance, battery life, LCD screen) and even more so the performance in daylight, the resulting images contain a lot more detail than the competitors and the images are extremenly sharp (for example the Canon SD700's (one of the most popular cams in the market) images are very soft-looking and suffer greatly from corner-softness, and sharpening in PP doesnt help much, its really the difference in lens and CCD) - Im sure the Fujinon lens coupled with the Super-CCD (almost 50% larger than the SD700's CCD with the same number of MP's, the main reason for the excellent noise control) is the explanation for this cameras excellent performance and its definetely a winner. Highly recommended.

PS. I cant seem to understand the comments of C. DSA. There is no dock adaptor for the F30 (that was for the F10), also the flash power is about 50% greater than the Canon Elphs and the F30 has one of the strongest flashes in its category. Controls are not limited at all (flash exposure controls is really a feature of more advanced cameras, this is a P&S and a very controlable one at that). The bulky AC adaptor is smaller than both my Minolta and Canon Battery Chargers. Canon images are not crisper at all and in fact far softer and the Fuji images are much less saturated than Canons, if anything they may be undersaturated not over - though there is an option to turn it up, though I prefer the natural, life-like colors (this is like a fact among anyone who knows photography, go to Dcresource.com and look at sample galleries to compare between cams, it is a great review site with excellent sample and test images.) Hmm, Really makes me wonder about some of the comments for this cam...

I've been a Canon guy for several years and throught that they lead the pack in photographic innovation. My family has several Canon SLR's, assorted lenses and digital Elph pocket cameras (SD 400, SD450 and SD550). Pocket cameras trade performance and features for small size and ease of use. In bright light without flash the Canon Elphs usually provide image quality which is ok for 8 x 10" photos if one is not too critical about sharpness, especially near the edges and corners. This resolution limit has more to due with the lackluster optics being used than with the number of megapixels. Basically, the tiny lenses are the limiting factor and not the sensor.

The Fuji F30 is about the same size and weight as the Canon SD550 (or SD700). I bought it based on the rave reviews it got in the high-ISO, low light category. So, when I tested it against my 7.1MP Canon SD550 I was greatly surprised by the vastly superior image quality of the 6.3MP Fuji at ALL ISO settings. The Fujicon lens used provides much sharper pictures than the Canon from edge to edge. Sure, the Canon will make ok 8 x 10's but those from the Fuji will be much sharper and crisper, especially away from the center where the Canon image gets softer. The difference is even more striking in lower light, such as indoors or outside when the sun is low or under heavy clouds. The Fuji provides much sharper AND lower noise images at ISO 800 than the Canon does at ISO 200. Essentially, the Fuji can use the same shutter speed (to freeze action and mitigate hand-shake) in one-fourth the light while still producing superior pictures!!! The Fuji could also provide a shutter speed four-times faster in the same light and give sharper pictures and less noisy pictures.

Another advantage of the Fuji F30 is the option to have full manual control over aperture, metering, etc, just like an SLR (no manual focus however). The LCD on the Fuji is also much brighter and clearer (many more pixels and less reflective) than the Canon. One more advantage is battery life. The Fuji battery is about twice as large as that used in the Canon SD550. It is rated at 580 shots while the Canon is rated at about 150 shots. There's not nearly as much need to buy and carry a spare battery for the Fuji.

OK, the Fuji does have a few disadvantages over the Canon. The worst of these to me is the use of tiny xD memory cards. Not only do you need to buy yet another type of card but large 1GB xD cards require much longer times (about 5-10 times as long) to transfer images to your computer through a card reader than do 1GB SD cards. The reason for this is that the small sized xD card require special hardware compression to allow 1GB to be stored. In reading the card the pictures have to be uncompressed into normal jpeg format. This slows down the transfer. The xD card compression seems to have no effect on how fast the camera can take pictures. The Fuji is at least as fast as the Canon in starting up and taking pictures.

Another lessor complaint IMO is the supplied Fuji battery charger. It charges the battery only while in the camera and has a cord to plug into the camera and another long cord to plug into the wall. In contrast, Canon provides a very tiny battery charger with folding outlet prongs. This packs easily and charges the battery directly with NO cords. Fuji could provide a similar charger but, instead, offers to sell you their version of the Canon cordless charger for an extra $60-90 as an accessory. You can also buy a non-Fuji version of the cordless charger for about $28, so it's not a big issue, but is an irritation. It is also worth noting that the Fuji has no peephole viewfinder. I rarely use this but some folks may think this an omission. On the other hand, the Fuji LCD is much brighter and less reflective than the Canon screen so it can actually be used in bright sunlight when the peephole would be the only option with the Canon.

In summary, aside from the issues of the xD card and supplied charger, the Fuji F30 represents a significant breakthrough in image quality, low-light performance and optional manual controls for small pocket cameras.

So I recently got this camera based on the good reviews and it sure doesn't dissapoint. It is an excellent all-around performer in many regards. I rated this camera 5 stars since I do think it is the best compact P&S in the market, easily.

Here are the main good points about the camera.
1. Very fast startup and focusing (which is also very very accurate too). Speedy performance.
2. Very impressive lens. The Fujinon lens is remarkable (it also has an EBC coating on the lens, what that does is remove lens flare which happens in scenes with high contrast. I am very impressed by the piece of glass on this cameras, definetely the sharpest lens I have encountered on a P&S for sure.
3. Super CCD sensor. The camera has excellent noise control for a compact cam. Detail and noise levels are excellent up to ISO800. Very acceptable at ISO1600 (makes an 8 x 10 print) and acceptable as a 4 x 6 at ISO3200. This is quite remarkable. This fact also enables the camera to use high ISO's to reduce camera shake and also reduce subject movement by using a fast shutter speed (which optical Image Stabilization modes cannot achieve - they only stop camera shake, not subject movement). Thanks to the cams impressive control of noise (although noise and noise reduction is visible (beyond ISO800) at 100% on your computer screen - which would be the same as printing the image almost 4ft wide) it does an excellent job when shots are printed. Thus the cam offers currently unmatched noise capability for a compact.
4. Manual controls. I love having Aperture and Shutter priority modes in a camera this size, there is also custom white balance too. Very nice.
5. Excellent movie mode (640 x 480 at 30fps until the card is full).
6. Very nice ergonomics (the design looks much better than the prior F10 yet it still feels very nice in the hand and is easily grippable with one hand due to the cleverly places rubber grips under the zoom lever).
7. The best batter life in its class (580 shots). The best by far actually. Again, currently unmatched.
8. Smart layout of controls, (a dedicated EV button - which is very handy) plus two Auto ISO modes (Auto 400 & Auto 1600), very smart. Also the ISO adjustment button is the first item in the F menu and the other items Metering, WB, etc. are all easily accesable in the main menu.
9. The LCD. Very good quality screen. It has +230,000 pixels, plus an anti-glare coating for outdoor use, it is very bright. In fact I turned it down to -2 setting to get more accurate reproduction of the scene. Also a quick brightness button which brightens the image when needed with the touch of a button, even more useful though hardly needed since its already very usable. Oh, not to mention 60fps view mode. In one word - smooth. Makes taking actions shots a breeze.
10. Very good metering and color reproduction. When comparing to my SD450 (it underexposes significantly in bright light and overexposes significantly in low-light with a lot of noise). The F30 does a spot-on job every-time. Very high IQ. Also, I have found that the Shade WB results in absolutely perfect colors outdoors (better than the Auto WB, IMO).
11. The AF illuminator is very bright. Can focus in pitch black, though what I like is that it doesnt resort to using it nearly as much as my Canon SD450 but only when it truly needs it.
12. The flash metering system (another excellent feature) called I-Flash. What it does is adjust ISO (up to 800 in Auto mode) to keep more natural lighting in the image and also reduce flash power to create a very impressive flash shot. Not your usual white-light overexposed foreground and black background but truly a balanced exposure with well-lit foreground and the natural colors from the lighting in the scene. Does not make the scene look like that bluish-white like other cameras flash system do. An excellent feature.

So as you can tell, the camera offers excellent performance, image quality and features. It is an incredibly impressive camera for the price. Next my few gripes with the camera.

The main negatives of the cam are (and unfortunately every camera has some)
1. Higher than average purple fringing. Though both my prior cams (Minolta and Canon) also suffered from this. It can also be controlled somewhat by adjusting aperture and EV and also helping Shade WB helps too (PF is caused mostly by overexposure so controlling variables helps too - and you will only get it if the image is overexposed and the scene has very high contrast.) Also PF can be removed quite easily in post-processing. This is the only issue relating to image-quality and the other positives outweigh this issue by far.
2. Continous shooting is a mixed bag. While the Top 3 and Final 3 modes are very fast, the Long Continous mode is quite slow (since it focuses before every shot - which can be usefull too). I suspect XD cards may have something to do with this though Im not sure. Also, XD cards are not really a burden anymore since 1GB cards can be found for about $40 online.
3. The battery is charged in cam with the AC adaptor (which is hardly bulky), this can be a burden since the cam cant be used and a spare battery charged at the same time (unless you buy an external charger - a la Canon - however the battery literally lasts close to 600 shots so it wont run out during a days shooting (more like a weeks shooting - even if you shoot a lot) no matter what, and if you come back with an emtpy battery you dont have to wait till its charged to transfer images to your PC, just plug the AC adaptor in the wall and plug in the USB cable and you're good to go so its not that bad really, It would be if the battery only lasted like my other two cams batteries but thankfully the battery life is remarkable it literally just goes and goes and goes.
4. Lastly, deleting an image in-cam is slow compared to my previous two cameras though this is not representative of overall operation and playback, they are very swift.

To sum up, this is my 3rd digital camera (first Fuji) and I am thoroughly impressed with this cam. It has the best image quality in its class with levels of sharpness and detail that I have not seen in any camera in the same category. (For example, the Canon and Minolta images look terribly soft and almost-out-of focus when compared to the F30 at 100%. It really is remarkable, it is the king of low-light shooters among P&S's but whats equally as striking is the impressive image quality in daylight shots with the excellent exposure and the oh-so sharp images. The Fujinon lens is excellent, I cannot stress the sharpness and level of detail enough, you have to see it with your own eyes. This lens when coupled with the 1/1.7 inch Super CCD - which is roughly 50% bigger than the Canon SD700's CCD that offers the same number of MP's - it becomes clear how the Fuji is able to control noise the way it does. Also, the flash is about 50% more powerful than the Canon's too though the camera does an excellent job of controlling how much it throttles down on subject to accurately expose the shot. The battery literally lasts 2-3 times longer than my Canon's. Some comments on here are frustrating me regarding this cam (some issues I have already covered above and others for example are: the dock adaptor - this camera does not have a dock-adaptor!!(that was for the F10 - the F30 has no dock adaptor or dongle or anything of that sort)! Makes me feel rather skeptical about some comments! Also, the AC adaptor is actually smaller than both my Canon and Minolta battery chargers for my previous cams, though it does have cables, hardly a drawback when the actual adaptor is more compact though. The images are not oversaturated one bit (Fuji is famous for its natural looking colors - this is like a fact among photographers, I recommend people to check out Dcresource.com and compare sample galleries there to competing cams, its an excellent review site with great sample and test images). Also the saturation can be turned up if needed (Chrome mode - though I prefer the natural life-like standard colors) also Shade WB outdoors produces perfectly accurate images and I highly recommend the use of it outside. There are plenty manual controls and settings, with an excellent menu system, great LCD & ergonomics and very impressive camera IQ.

All in all the F30 is a great camera with truly remarkable image quality, outstanding sensitivity levels and noise handling (unmatched in the indsutry - less a DSLR), advanced manual controls, swift operation & focusing and the excellent features (some of which again - are unmatched in the industry). Lastly, the highly impressive metering, along with the Super-CCD and Fujinon lens produces results that are quite simply astonishing for a camera it's size! Very Highly Recommended.

This is one impressive camera. There are so many things to like about it I dont know where to start really. I'll do a basic review as many things have been covered in reviews here already. Things going for the camera are: Impressive manual controls (A/S priority and Manual WB). Amazing battery life. The best LCD ive seen on a compact camera. Excellent picture quality. Excellent ISO performance and very little noise up to ISO800. ISO1600 and 3200 clean up very nicely in a program like neat image thus are perfectly usable (You can download neat image for free). Good operations and menu system. Very snappy performance. The cam also offers great flexibility as there are several scene modes, manual controls, a lot of WB settings (including manual) and easy EV control. The lens is also very sharp indeed as noted in the other reviews, mt other compact cameras dont even come close to the sharpness of this cameras lens. Iflash really works and is a great feature as it keeps foregrounds from getting blown out and has a nice balanced tone to the overall image. Many great things to love about this cam. The ISO performance is really great though (much better than having an optically stabilized lens as those lenses cannot stop moving subjects and motion blur of the subjects but high sensivity increases shutter speed so you can freeze subjects and eliminate camera shake). Thanks to the incredible high ISO performance due to the R&D efforts of Fuji this camera is able to pull it off, the only other cameras that can pull this off are expensive Digital SLR cameras. Quite incredible I have to admit. The colors are also very realistic and natural looking (those Fuji colors!) and not plastic like as my prior Canon's.


Some things that could be better are: Better accuracy in Multi-metering mode (seems too center weighed, but usually it results in excellent results). If you get overexposed images using -EV helps a lot (theres a dedicated button for that so thats excellent) or switch to Average metering which helps too. Also continous shooting is good but not as great as some other compacts these days. An external charger would have been nice but there are positives for having an AC adaptor too, such as being able to charge the cam and transfer images at the same time. The battery lasts almost 600 snaps anyways so you really dont have to worry about it running out.

Concluding, this is one gem of a camera. It offers unparalled features (such as the Iflash, ISO performance and battery life) and easily outperforms all other compact cameras I have owned and used prior to this gem. It is absolutely amazing in low-light. The highest recommandations!

Recently I'd planned to replace my Panasonic Lumix FX7 with the FX9. I love the handy little FX7, but its battery life was prohibitively short. To the point that anxiety about when the camera was going to die was marring the pleasure of vacations.

The FX9 has twice the battery life and I thought, problem solved. But just as I was beginning to purchase the FX9, the FX01 came out. I was thrilled, as I could really use the extra wide angle capability.

But then the Canon SD700IS came out. What a lovely little camera. Beautifully made, also good battery life, a longer lens, and now with the Panasonic's trump card, optical IS. And while it seems that the image quality of the FX01 is a slight step down from FX9, the Canon appears to be a clear step up. Megapixel absolutely loved the SD700IS

My only hesitation was that some time ago my wife bought me a Canon A80. It had a tendency to "smooth" the image and I didn't like it. It seemed to diminish the realism and crispness of the picture. Indeed, the criteria I'm used to using when evaluating a camera or camera lens are sharpness, contrast, and saturation. Yes, I could sharpen the image made by the Canon using the computer, so clearly the data was being recorded. However, the actual plane of focus, even after sharpening, is not obvious. I know that professionals actually prefer this smoothness, but I found this so troubling that after days of agonizing, I sent the otherwise lovely A80 back.

When I later acquired the Panasonic FX7, I didn't hold it to the same standard, since it is truly only a pocket camera. I was resigned to accepting slightly disappointing images, but was grateful the camera was there to get the shot. And as long as it is set to ISO 80, the FX7 can deliver a pretty good image and has good lens.

As I agonized about my decision, I looked at quite a few online camera review sites. I particularly like Dpreview, Dcresource, Megapixel and Dave's picks. So, I carefully scrutinized the sample pictures for the SD700IS, and uh oh, there's that Canon smoothing again. This is particularly obvious if you have a look at the macro shot of Mickey Mouse in the DCresource site. The silver bit on Mickey's hat is just a blur- yipe! It's not out of focus, but it almost looks like it is due to the "smoothness". It's just not my cup of tea.

As a piece of kit, the SD700IS is a great thing, so despite the smoothness I didn't want to totally let go of the idea of getting it. As I was agonizing over the camera's images, I noted that in Dpreview, cameras are often compared to a very high resolution camera called the "Fuji F10". This camera's images are a virtually always superior to whatever they are compared to, so much so that I had just assumed it was a DSLR. But I clicked on it and I was shocked to discover that it is another point and shoot!

Now all of a sudden there was another player. I looked through the images from all the website reviews, and in terms of image detail, contrast and ISO the F10 with its "superCCD" appears to be in a slightly higher league than other point and shoots, including the Canon 700IS.

The newer F30 just came out, and so I decided to bite the bullet and buy one before the DPreview came out. I was a little spooked by the Megapixel review, which did not give the F30 as high a rating as the CanonSD700. On the other hand, Dave's site provides a means of side-by side comparison between the CanonSD700 and the F30. In this case, in equal light, my own subjective assessment gave the edge to the F30. But at 400 ISO and above, the F30 blew the CanonSD700 away. In fact, the image quality of the F30 at ISO 400 is as good as the SD700IS at 100, and vastly better than the FX01.

True, the main strength of the F30 is its light gathering capability, making it seem like a one trick pony. However, it is a very important trick. A camera is a machine whose main purpose it to gather light, focus it, and record it. The F30 is very very good at this. It's bit like saying a particular racing car is a one trick pony if it has more horse power than the other cars. Again, if you are going to pick one trick to be good at, that is a very major trick.

And when I'm honest with myself, I frequently use point and shoots in low light situations- indoors, in shaded areas, at dawn, at dusk, at night. When I look at my average travel photos- a very high percentage of the shots are in low light. With many of my shots with the Panasonic FX7, the static parts of the image are clear, but the people are blurry. This is the legacy of low-light optical image stabilized shots. I'm steady, shooting between breaths, the camera is steady, thanks to OIS- but the subject is not completely still. But by shooting 2 or even 3 stops faster, my hope is that both the people and the background will be clear.

When the F30 arrived, I immediately noted it is larger than the Panasonic FX01, which was a bit disappointing. And although easy to use, it didn't seem quite as slick at the Canon. However, as I handled the camera for the first few days, I realized that it is very well made, and one has the feeling that being tightly squeezed in a jeans pocket won't hurt it. So I'm now fairly comfortable shoving it in my pocket.

But once I saw the camera's first pictures, all concerns vanished. The pictures are phenomenal. The sharpness, edge definition, and lack of noise in the low light shots are so good that the camera is really in a higher league than the other point and shoots I was considering. Granted, saturation is a bit low. I used to be an enthusiastic amateur photographer- Bogen tripods, Nikkor Lenses, and push processing my Fuji Velvia one stop. You know the drill. Well, that was years ago. But the F30 is good enough that I'm starting to take more artistic shots again. And I'll just bump up the saturation a bit using the computer.

Another facet is that phenomenal battery life. I shot 375 images, with flashes, and lots of reviewing, and even transferred them to my computer before the battery indicator finally moved from full to the next level down. On my second 4 day trip with the camera, I didn't bother to bring the charger. I didn't need it. Sitting for 2 weeks without use- turning it on- full charge indicated with no losses. What a difference, and what a relief from the constant ritual of charging the battery after every 5 hours with the Panasonic FX7.

So the F30 is a two trick pony- battery life and fantasic light gathering.

When the Dpreview came out, it confirmed my findings. The dpreview is spot on. If you compare the images of the Fuji F30 and the Canon SD700 at 400, 800, well, it's not even close. I wouldn't hesitate to blow up an ISO 400 shot from the Fuji, wherease with the Canon, I might not even bother to take an ISO 400 shot. In retrospect, I'm a bit puzzled the scoring of the Megapixel review, which I'm chalking up to their weighting the handling and menu systems highly.

Since I'm primarily concerned with image quality, battery life, and the speed to focus, the F30 is perfect for me. The camera does what is it advertised to do and I'm really happy that I have it along with me, knowing that I'll never have to feel even slightly disappointed by the results.

Rather than repeat what everyone else has said, let me mention one thing I haven't seen talked about.
When I received my F30, I wanted to see if the F30 could focus in very low light - so that I could take flash pictures if necessary when it was too dark for the boost in ISO settings to help.

Not only can it focus in low light, it can easily focus in *complete darkness*. It has a green focus assist light that works very well. It is very bright and works in total darkness and has a very good range. Seems that the focus assist light has come a long way. Some of the earlier generation assist lights were next to useless. Not the F30. It's an idea club/dance/bar camera for very low light conditions - using a flash. Sure beats my Canon S70 - which had an orange focus assist light that was useless at helping the camera focus in low light.

I've had the f30 for 2 weeks and I really like it. I take it everywhere in my pocket (in a 3x6 inch plastic snack bag to protect the screen from scratches).

This a remarkable piece of technology. The images are as sharp as many larger and more expensive digital camera but pictures at the ASA 3200 are grainy. The power engineering is amazing...daily pictures for a week without recharging.

The camera controls are are good as possible with a tiny camera. The minimal shutter delay is a welcome improvement over older digital cameras. The auto mode takes great pictures in many different lighting conditions. The double picture mode, one with flash and one without, is great for the many picture when you're not sure whether to use fill flash. The museum mode, no sound no flash, is great for stealth photography.

Everyone who I have allowed to use the f30 wants to buy one.

The low light capability is every bit as effective as everything you've read in the other reviews. I also like the ability to contol the Auto ISO to 100-400 range if you want. It also has the ability to control it from 100-1600. Frankly I would have preferred an Auto-800 range to the latter which would allow Auto ISO ranging between 100 and 800. The reason is that at ISO 800 the camera still performs very well But at 1600 the quality does deteriorate considerably.

This camera badly needs the function to set sharpness, contrast and saturation independently of the other settings. As it is now, you can set at Standard which to most people will deliver a rather blah image (but you can adjust the saturation on the computer.) Or you can set Chrome which provides vivid saturation and I think extra contrast - perhaps too much so. Individual settings would be a welcome addition.

The biggest weakness in this camera, which almost made me drop it to 3 stars is the inconsitant metering. It has a tough time with sunny scenes. Try to shoot flowers, and it will blow highlights more than 50% of the time. Even with portraits, the flash overshoots the scene. I found the best way to use this camera is to keep it at -1/3 exposure compensation, and sometimes use -2/3 compensation. It's too bad the metering isn't as on the money as those in Sony, Panasonic and Canon cameras.

The average metering is fairly worthless. The pattern metering is the most inconsistent. The spot metering is your best bet to get good shots.

One other weakness in the F30 is the inability to accurately examine pictures on the LCD screen. The magnification is simply not high enough to see whether pictures are in focus or out of focus. Lots of pictures that appear fine on the LCD, turn out to be blurry throw-aways on the computer.

Still debating whether this camera is a keeper. I got it for the low light and in this respect the camera is exceptional. But the metering inconsitencies and blown highlight are very irratating.

In addition to often being ineffective,
I consider camera flashes comparable to cell phones for rudeness.
This camera comfortably rides in a trouser pocket and captures useful images in a most ambient light conditions without flash.
Minor complaints:
* lack of histogram (but you knew that).
* not being able to disable date display on the LCD
when displaying camera settings.
* having to toggle thru several modes to disable flash
* having to toggle thru several modes to enable composition grid
* no aperture priority mode that adjusts ISO as well as shutter
* limited availability of exposure compensation
Has anyone found a source for spare non-standard (grr) USB cables?

I have a friend who ordered one of these cameras who in turn convinced me to order one. It is one of the best cameras I have ever used. All the features of the camera are in the correct places. I can take pictures and movies and the movies are excellent. I cannot think of one thing wrong with this camera other than it is too easy and convenient to use not to mention small.

this camera is very good for the low light photo capture. but it still have some space for Fuji to do the improvement.

1. sharpen the image. (photo look like abit blur if compare with other camera)
2. enable ISO selection for automatic mode. (this is because this camera always auto select ISO3200 which have a lot of noises...)
3. more power flash needed. (current flash light good for indoor photo,,, but it is not good when you taking photo under sun...face still look dark)

I've had the camera for about a month. I do not use all this camera's features (e.g. manual control), but the photographs are great. Battery seems to last forever.

I acquired this camera a few weeks ago, recently I was also given a Canon SD700 as a gift - which I considered getting when I was buying the F30. I wasn't inclined to write a review on this camera but since I now have both (for now - I will get rid of the Canon soon) I thought I would write a review and try to compate the two a little. Many points have been made about this camera in prior reviews already. My take after comparing the two is that: if you want a capable and flexible compact camera this is the choice for you. My main gripe with the SD700 was that it offered no manual controls which I have come to love on the F30. Also, the images out of the SD700 are softer straight out of the camera. Also the SD700 suffers from corner softness and some mild vignetting (especially in sky shots). The SD700 does have its better points like continous shooting and having OIS. But, the ISO performance is non-comparable to the F30 starting at ISO200 and above. Also, the battery litteraly lasted at least twice as long as the SD700. The flash power is much much better and when coupled with the ISO performance it is very nice. Now in low-light the F30 is no doubt the king of compacts. The one area where the SD700 did better was the F30 would sometimes blow highlights more often than the SD700 (whose images were almost always more underexposed) - but this is an easy fix - either keep the camera on -1/3 EV or even -2/3 in Multi metering to match the exposures from the SD700, or in bright sunlit landscape scenes use Average metering for perfect results. Though be warned - Average isnt for all situations, but works well in sunlit outdoor shots for an even exposure and in other cases too. Overall, I am keeping the F30 for sure and either giving the SD700 as a gift myself or selling it - since I can use the F30 in more photographic oppurtunities - low light, bright light, flash shots, etc. Also, the SD700 does not offer anything to justify its high price - no manual controls (Aperture control is most important and the F30 has 10 stops that can be set manually - the SD700 has none - your at the mercy of the camera and it tends to always pick a wide open aperture), the SD700 also has OK feature set, and decent but not amazing image quality especially considering the price. The one issues the F30 suffers most from is purple fringing, but this can also easily be fixed without resorting to post-processing: there is PF if you overexpose the image if the aperture is at the wide-open setting, but setting the aperture to f4 or higher eliminates all PF problems - that simple. The F30 can produce a better image in every situation I tested the cameras in - especially if you know how to get the best out of the camera - then it is almost in a class of its own as far as compact cameras go - especially in low-light. A great buy for sure.

it works nice in the dark. it is very pixalated though. most pictures are good in the daytime, but most pictures at night seemed to be washed out, but they are viewable, just not the greatest quality that I was expecting.

Easy to use, with good automatic setting. Enough pre-sets and manual control to let someone who is into slightly arty photos but with little photography knowledge to get interesting shots.

Quick shutter turn around and FANTASTIC low-light settings. Ambient light in nightclubs and discos gives decent pictures of people without flash at ISO 3200.

The F30 is an evolutionary step-up in terms of low-light performance from the F10, which was the first ultra-compact camera to give high-quality high-ISO pictures. The F30 is about the same size as its predecessor but actually looks and feels smaller, thanks to its restyling. However, I found the F10 much easier to hold and operate.

In terms of ISO performance, the F30 is about the same ISO-for-ISO as the F10, but adds a ISO 3200 setting. To be honest, pictures taken at ISO 3200 are barely usable beyond web or e-mail, i.e., an ISO 3200 won't make even a good 6"x4" print. But it's there if you do need it, and I have used it on quite a number of low-light conditions. In the end, I think it's a good thing to have, because memories, even captured with a lot of digital noise, can be too precious to not record.

The F30 simplifies the user interface of the F10 but I find it harder to use than the F10. If you are not an upgrader from the F10 like me, since shouldn't be a problem. The buttons are smaller than on the F10 but still usable even by someone like myself with big hands. One welcome improvement is the F30 now uses a standard mini-USB cable, as opposed to the special-connector dongle the F10 had. You still need that Fuji cable, though, unless you use a separate USB reader and take out the xD card each time you download to PC (which is what I do).

In regular ISO pictures, quality is very good but not yet top-notch. In other words, you get good-quality, pleasing pictures but you should know that Canon cameras probably still give you slightly better pictures at the low ISOs. But, alas, this is a totally subjective opinion, so don't take my words for it. You should judge the picture quality yourself. Even I'd have preferred Canon's image quality at ISO 100 and 200, I still value Fuji's low-ISO performance, enough to upgrade to the F30 instead of buying a Canon.

The F30 is fast. I think it's a hair faster (i.e., less shutter delay) than the F10. The built-in LCD, also at 2.5" diagonal, has twice as many pixels as the F10 but the post-shot preview can look coarse. The camera is now made in China (as opposed to Japan for the F10) but is quite well constructed.

One amazing thing about the F10 was its amazing battery life. The F30 is even better! I've taken over 600 high-resolution pictures with hours and hours of VGA video on my F30 in the 3 months I've had it, and the battery status indicator still has two out of three bars remaining! This is just amazing! I used to have a Casio that had long battery life, but the F10 and now F30 are just way better when it comes to battery life.

So there were two reasons I chose the F10 and then upgraded to the F30, instead of getting a Canon or a Panasonic (which has great zoom and optical stabilization features). One, the good low-ISO performance. Two, Fujifilm supports the panda preservation program at the National Zoo in D.C., and I'm a big sucker for those black-and-white bears, so I support Fujifilm. But when it comes to technical details, I'm totally unbiased, so you can trust my reviews.

Feel free to contact me with questions.

Had this camera for a couple weeks now as I sold my prior cam (which was already a new cam - I just didnt like it). This camera however is quite excellent, I am able to get captures from scenes that were never possible before using the high ISO. In short, I recommend this camera highly for anyone interested in a very capable compact camera. The image quality is superb, its very easy to use and figure out and the features are excellent for such a small cam (manual controls, great LCD, battery life, ISO capability). Maybe one of the few compact cameras that you can actually grow with as a photographer. A must buy for anyone in the hunt for a compact.

The camera easy to use and takes great photos. You can take a lot of photos on the camera provided you buy a memory card with the camera as the built in memory is small.

The camera only has one major flaw IMHO. On almost all other cameras you can imprint the time and date that you took the photo on each picture by choosing this option in the camera setup. Presto all your photos will have this information imprinted on them. However this is not the case with the fuji cameras you have two bad options. 1) Use DPOF printing and select each photo on turn this feature on. 2) Import all photos into the fuji film FinePix Viewer software and then do the following eight step process on each photo:
1) Highlight photo
2) Go to Image Utilization (on the Mac double click the photo)
3) Click on Clip/ Insert Text
4) Click on Insert Text tab
5) Click on Date and Time box
6) Date and Time should appear in image
7) You can move the date and time and also edit the font and color.
8) Close and Save the image

This is a lot of work let me tell you! The FinePix Viewer software is not like iPhoto so Macintosh users will have to suffer with this program just to add the date and time to each photo.

I was expecting much more from this camera. All the reviews make it out to be revolutionary.
Hmm, i dont think so.. Daytime fotos are great. Underwater is crappy, then again , I dont have a strobe yet, so we will wait and see. The camera reviews say its noisy.. I dint really know what that meant until i started using the movie feature. Click , clack, clunk.. Is all i hear when i use the movie mode, as the lens is adjusting , yet it has to stay at a fixed zoom ? this doesnt make sense to me, why do i have to have a fixed zoom if the camera iris is constanly adjusting>

Overall, if I had to do it again, id get something better. For those that dont care about low light quality wash out, and crappy auto focus, go ahead and buy it.

I agree with the previous poster and with the photo review sites that the F30 sets new standards for low light performance. As it's September now in New England and the days are getting shorter, that can be a real plus and I think I'll be happy with the camera throught the spring. But...

This camera is terribly slow! I bought the fastest Xd card I could find and it's just miles behind my previous Canon SD500. There's no comparison... espcially with continuous shooting and picture review/delete.

Looking back at older pics taken with the Canon, I think the Fuji does not win on outdoors photos. Canon has such a smooth and artifact-free quality... the F30 can't match it even at ISO100. But the Fuju is more detailed... I think there is a trade-off with the noise reduction system they each use.

Canon should just impove thier cameras for better low light performance and I'll not stray again. I've had many Elphs and just sold my Rebel XT to buy the XTi.

BUT I differ with the previous poster re: user interface. I think the F30 is easier to deal with re: changing ISO on the fly... and Canon doesn't even offer the option of apiture or shutter priority.

I've owned 4 digital cameras and this is by far the best. My nice Sony DSC-V3 has been sitting in the closet ever since I bought this (about 4 months ago).

PROS
-Absolutely the best sensitivity of any camera shy of a digital SLR. ISO 800 is perfect. ISO 1600 is usable. A digital SLR will blow it away, but ask yourself...do you REALLY want to carry around a big clunky camera with all those delicate parts? You can bring this with you in a jacket pocket, and it will give you the freedom to just snap images all over, discreetly. Its quite small, only a bit bigger and heavier then the real small ones.
-The battery life. The other weekend I shot 450 images (without flash), and the battery did not drop down from a "full" charge! That's excellent because you can take this thing on a 5-day trip and leave the charger at home.
-Its really pretty fast. Of course most of the newer generation cameras are.

CONS
-Purple fringing can be pretty high. Use Paint Shop Pro's purple fringing tool and you can make it disappear.
-XD cards may not be supported by your computer card reader. The USB cable works great, but the bummer is you can't just swap this card into your PDA to check out the photos like you often can with an SD card.

OTHER
-This camera will not automatically deliver stunning photos. You need to learn how to use it...study its features and study photography in general (for example, what is exposure compensation?). Then you need to experiment a LOT in different lighting conditions to get great photos. But with knowledge and practice you will appreciate the advantage that this camera offers over its competitors.
-XD cards aren't bad...I bought a 1GIG high-speed XD card and it cost like $50. And that card is NOT slow and it holds more than 600 images on the high res setting! If you can take that many photos in a few days you should ask yourself if you should start paying more attention to your life(rather than experiencing it through a camera)!

unbelievable performance in low light. The flash will light up people or objects in complete darkness that are 60 feet away. Sturdy construction, with an extensive menu that is also easy to use. Who else offers a camera with a "Party" setting? There is a reason this camera won a European trade association's Camera of the Year award.

Cons: xD cards are harder to find and pricier than SD cards, but so what....you might pay $25 more, and how many people have more than 2 x 1 gig cards? Store your photos on CDs.

Another disadvantage is that the photo review is a bit slow to load, and there is no viewfinder (which I'd rarely use)

I enjoy available light photography with fast lenses and Leica cameras. When using P&S digitals, I've been frustrated by poor image quality at 400 and higher ASAs (like muddy old VHS tapes), slow lenses, and sluggish shutter lag. The Fuji definitely takes a huge stride at the high-speed image quality problem (possibly the best 800/1600/3200 images of any digital P&S), has a reasonably fast f2.8 lens and decent shutter timing. It can definitely take good photos without flash in bars and restaurants and general indoor conditions. Forget stabilitation if you want photos of people, if they are moving, nothing can stabilize that; you need higher sensitivity or faster lenses. The kicker is that the camera is one of the least expensive cameras I've ever bought, so even as digital depreciates the value of the camera, you don't feel like your investment is for nought.

I became a big fan of the Fujifilm FinePix F30

pros:
- good low light focusing
- shocking battery life (500 pics!)
- great ISO performance
- tons of manual controls
- excellent picture quality
- powerful flash

cons:
- no image stabilization as in panasonic
- XD cards are slow and not as cheap as others
- plastic tripod mount, flimsy door over battery & memory compartment
- no optical viewfinder
- made in china

I've owned 5 digital cameras; I'm an amateur who goes back to the SLR days. I have liked my prior two Fuji's but have had reliability problems, battery life problems, exposure problems. Minor. I decided to step up. I was looking at any and everythingi from Panasonic/Canon/Olympus to Leica. I could afford anything and had 2 cameras to trade in.
I finally settled on the F30. First of all I was impressed with the uniformity of excellent reviews across a whole range of sites online. Second, my local camera store raved about this, despite the fact that I said the only thing I wanted was high quality pictures, price no object.

Frankly, I'm very impressed. I didn't want to go from AA's to proprietary lithium, but frankly @ >500 pix on a charge I am OK. With my prior camera the AA's wore down in a day. With this, it is small enough to go in my pack 24/7 and the battery has lasted over a 2 weeks with no sign of loss. I am totally fine with Xd cards, in fact I didn't want to switch to something else. Lack of optical viewfinder was a touchy area but frankly the other cameras I was looking at lacked one also, so I figured I'd make the leap. Fit and finish are wonderful. Video is excellent, in fact for travel I used to use a combo camcorder that took stills; now I use this for the occasional videos that I want. (incidentally, they sync with my creative Zen perfectly. I mean perfectly)

Picture quality is superb. I buy into the super CCD and the quality of the lens. This is far better optically than my e550 - no contest. I can magnify this on my monitor to tremendous zooms and the resolution is phenomenal. I take a picture of ivy from 20 feet away and blow it up till it fills my 15" monitor with just a leaf and it is crisp.

Menu, great. Ergonomics - so-so. Very hard to pick up with moderate sized hands. NO grip - hard to pull out blind from your pack and orient yourself. Probably my major gripe.
Very happy with selections. Like the 1600-3200 ISO settings. Superb in low light. I was very disappointed with prior cameras - birthday parties, kids indoors, snapshots in restaurants, buildings, museums were blurry and awful. No more.
Zoom is adequate. I wanted resolution. I managed to handle my Pixel envy and stick with a 6 instead of a 10, and am thrilled with the results. Macro, flash very good.

Other reviews are quite extensive on the F30. I just wanted to add that I discoverred that, while Fuji says you must use slow type M XD cards, the camera works fine and fast with the older plain XD cards. 512MB says I have about 180 pictures to go, which is plenty for me.
Auto mode defaults to ISO1600 and never switches to ISO 3200, even in pitch blackness. To get ISO3200 you need to be in "Manual."
Movie mode makes huge AVI files.
The "stabilization" labels are a lie. Maybe the F40 will have optical stabilization. I'd pay a bit more to have it.
Realtime display is brighter than the same dark room by human eye. However, upon download, these images look a bit dark and need to be photoshopped to brighten them up.
Fuji insists you use their software. However, I found that Win XP has a driver for the F30. Under My Computer it shows as a Camera (not a drive). From the Properties menu WinXP provides the option to automatically download the pictures into a new directory auto-created based upon calendar date. Once configured, just plug in the F30, turn on the camera power and the download happens all by itself. There is no need to disable the connection before unplugging (like there is with my older cameras).
My best photos are candid indoor shots of people who do not realize they are being photographed. I'm falling in love with my F30. The sound effects can be turned off. Also, the Auto Iluminator for helping focus can be disabled, but The F30 seems to only use it if it is really really needed.

I love my FinePix F30. I know what a great camera it is because I have compared its performance against two of its most highly rated competitors.

I took a set of pictures and several videos on both a Canon PowerShot SD600 and SD700 in a Best Buy, recording them on an SD memory card. Once I later purchased the F30 I took it to the same Best Buy and shot a set of similar pictures and videos. Then I compared the Canon pictures and videos with those from my F30 on my 1289 x 1024 computer screen. All the cameras took great quality stills when there was no handshake blur. But I got less hand-shake blur from the F30 than either of the two Canons. (I assume this is because the F30's lower light requirements allow fasters shutters speeds.) I got these better results without using the F30's anti-shake mode, which I did not find very useful the few times I tried it. On average, the F30's pictures had a lot less handshake blur than the SD600's, and a little less than those of the SD700 (which has image stabilization). The low light performance was better with the F30 than with the Canons, but the F30's low light performance was not as exceptional as I had been led to believe by some reviews.

THE FIELD IN WHICH THE F30 ABSOLUTELY BLEW THE CANONS OUT OF THE WATER WAS IN VIDEO RECORDING. The video from the F30 is only slightly worse than that from my digital video camera. That from both Canon's was much worse. (In fact, it was the poor quality of both Canon's video that caused me not to buy one of them.) When most people first see video from my F30 they express surprise that it is so good. In fact, it is so good that the only reason one would ever normally want to lug around a digital video camera instead of the F30 is because the F30 does not let you zoom while recording (and it has a much more limited range of zoom). The lack of zoom means I often find myself sticking the camera within several feet of people's faces to get a good head shot, which can cause annoyance. The F30's video works well in all but very poorly lit indoor night scenes. Its audio is also much better than that of the two Canons. The F30 has no rubber foam to protect it against wind noise, but absent wind the F30's sound is surprisingly good (although not as good as my digital video camera's). Not only is the F30's video and sound quality much better than that of the two Canons, but it also stores roughly twice as much high quality video per unit of space in a memory card, which is very important.

My one main complaint with the F30 is that its pictures aren't as likely to make sunny skies have that wonderful bright blue that I normally got with my former 4 mega pixel Canon PowerShot A??? (I forget the number, I gave the camera away.) The FinePix's sunny skies tend to be more dark, but they are usually still great pictures. I also wish the F30 used SD memory cards instead of the more expensive and lower capacity XD memory cards.

But, overall, after 4 months of ownership, I would highly recommend the F30.

You'd be hard pressed to find any camera, even a dSLR, that can take acceptable hand-held low light photographs, barring the Fujifilm Futura film series. My Canon 20D can take extended "bulb" shutter release photos, but shadows are invariably mangled with noise banding on anything above ISO 400. The F30 is so light sensitive at high ISO it can overexpose images, and I say that with astonishment and respect.

I've had the F30 for a few weeks now, and the few gripes people have with it (purple fringing on high contrast details such as tree branchs against sky, can be handled by upping the F stops up to F5; user interface, which once mastered is fine; AC chord which is minor, and there are cheap $19 chargers on ebay; viewfinder and LCD which are fine and high rez for what it is; xD card which although a bit slow, is $50 for a 2Gb on ebay; Daylight color I found perfectly acceptable, all the images can use a bump in contrast, but my dSLR shots do too) don't compare to the advantages.

The intelligent lighting algorithm makes flash photos come out excellent, and the level of detail and sharpness from the lens are on par with professional Canon lens. And as mentioned, being able to literally see objects in near dark, as if they are lit, is the price of admission. I have a digital SLR, so if I want a daylight shots of the Grand Canyon, that's the camera I want to use. The majority of "I wish I had my camera with me" shots are invariably nighttime, indoors, and in situations where you don't want to try to hand hold a 5 second exposure, no matter what image stabilization tricks some cameras and lens claim to possess. The very high ISO settings give very very natural noise... not tack sharp, but done in a grain-like manner to be acceptable. Normal high ISO shots on typical CCDs give horrid banded "grid" noise t