Hands-on with FujiFilm's FinePix F810 Zoom

For the last several days we've been playing around with the FinePix F810 Zoom, FujiFilm's new 6.3 megapixel digital camera, and have a few quick initial impressions:

First off, it has a maximum resolution of 6.3 megapixel?s but since it uses FujiFilm?s Super CCD sensor it has a mode where you can capture up to 12.3 million ?recorded? pixels (basically the sensor has two sets of photodiodes, one with a high sensitivity to light, the other with a lower sensitivity to light). You can argue about whether or not Super CCD sensors result in better pictures, but pixel for pixel, we found that a three megapixel shot taken with the F810 had richer color than a similar shot taken with other cameras.

That said, unless you?re a pretty hardcore photographer you probably won?t be able to tell much difference between shooting in 12.3 megapixel mode on the F810 versus 6 megapixel mode (and the resulting images will also take up a lot less space on your memory card (it uses xD Picture Cards). No matter what resolution we set the camera for, the pictures turned out excellent for all of our outdoor shots; indoor shots were decent, but not so spectacular that we were blown away, and it took some fiddling with the copious number of manual controls to get the most of it when shooting inside.

Best thing about the F810: It has a widescreen mode which lets you shoot pics (and video clips) with a 16:9 aspect ratio (its 2.1-inch LCD screen even has a 16:9 aspect ratio, too, so you don?t have to deal with letterboxing).
Fortunately they made switching between widescreen and normal modes really easy and there?s a dedicated switch just above the LCD screen.