Review of the Fujifilm F505 Digital Camera

I recently received a Fujifilm F505EXR point and shoot camera. The camera has a 16mp CMOS sensor. It has a 15X zoom. The lens is a Fujinon lens with f =  4.4 to 60mm. Min aperture at 4.4mm is 3.5 and the min at 60mm is 5.3. The camera has a 3" fixed LCD display. Mine is a beautiful black color.

I bought this camera to have a decent picture taking machine with me at all times. Particularly for the daily trips to work. It's small size makes it easy to conceal and store.

I have owned Fujifilm cameras before. My second digital camera was a S3000. I really liked that camera.

My first images with the F505 were of some Orange gerbera daisies. The first thing I noticed was the intense color saturation. I also shoot Olympus which has some pretty intense color (which I love) but the F505 colors were even more saturated. I frequently have to back off on the saturation in Lightroom.

The camera has many modes for taking images. The P, S, A, & M (Program, Shutter, Aperture and Manual)  Modes behave as you would expect for the most part. There is also a Scene, EXR, and Advanced mode.

The scene mode is pretty typical - settings for portraits, dogs, cats, night, etc. I have not used any of these modes.

The EXR sensor is interesting. Here's what fujifilm says about it on their website.

The EXR modes are: Auto and Priority. The Auto mode optimizes the settings for the current subject to improve clarity, reduce noise, or enhance dynamic range.  The Priority mode has 3 options: Resolution Priority, High ISO and Low Noise, D-Range Priority. I have not yet played around with the EXR mode.

I currently am using the Aperture mode for the most part, as I do with my DSLR's. I also set the ISO at 400 rather than using the auto ISO capability. I have taken some low light images at 3200 ISO. They were ok, but somewhat noisy.

Overall

Picture quality is good. This is not a DSLR. You cannot get the same kind of blurred backgrounds at wide open apertures as with the proper lens on a DSLR. You can get some pretty decent shots. I find it harder to isolate my subjects - particularly for flowers and insects.

The pros are that for the size and portability, the images are good. There is enough functionality to get pretty decent photographs in most situations.

There are some more functions like panoramas and video that I will consider later.

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