I just bought a new compact point-and-shoot digital: Fujifilm Finepix F30. I chose this one for it's low light capabilities, and I am not disappointed. In fact I'm absolutely amazed!!
Here is a shot I took at ISO 3200, yes 3200!!, in very low lighting. First shot is unprocessed (by me), except for resize to 800x600. The second had a bit of processing: median filter, resize, sharpening. Yes, an ISO 3200 image from a compact digital (and I mean compact!) could still take a bit of sharpening.
Full frame images at reduced size and quality from ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600. (There was too much light for ISO 3200.) As you can see there is little between them at this 800x600 size! (Any bigger the file size would have been too large.)
Full size crops (recompressed jpegs) from the 6 MP originals. Here you can see noise artefacts at IS800 and faster.
You can also see the main flaw of this camera: purple fringing and halo-ing around very high contrast features. You can see a bit of a purple halo around the car headlight at ISO 100 and 200, but interestingly not at 400 or faster.
Similarly around the tree trunk against the sky at the top middle of the image. Purple fringing is quite strong at ISO 100 and 200 (you can even make it out in the small 0.5 MP images above), but absent at faster settings.
All in all I'm very happy with this camera, especially the low noise at high ISO settings, thanks to its slightly oversized (for a compact) 6MP "SuperCCD". It will be great for shooting in low light without a flash which is what I found myself trying to do more than anything with a compact camera. And the flash too will be more useful as the high ISO capability will mean a range that extends beyond a few metres. Who knows, I might even try to squeeze an astrophoto out of the little camera at Little Desert and/or at Snake Valley.
It's a shame about the chromatic aberration of the lens (and could do with a bit wider angle zoom too) but I knew what I was in for there before I bought it. As Steve Wright put it: "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
And here is one more shot of a group of shops on Princes Hwy, Clayton VIC. Taken 1/2 hour after sunset at ISO 800, f/2.8, 1/42s. Downsized and moderately sharpened. There is more noise in the image from the jpeg compression I had to do to keep size acceptable for posting than from the camera!
Some more pics to show off low light high ISO performance from ISO 100 to 3200. Indirect incandescent and direct halogen (low wattage) lighting (all rather dim as you can tell from exposure times). Auto white balance. Aperture fixed at f/4. Exposure from 2s at ISO 100 to 1/13s at ISO 3200. (all with -1/3 EV compensation)
First the full image resized to 1024x768. Shown at ISO 100, 400, 1600.
Crops from a 2MP (1600x1200) resize. ISO 100,200,400,800,1600,3200.
As you can see there is significant detail lost to noise suppression in going from ISO 400 to 800. But the image is still looking quite respectable and smooth at ISO 800. At 1600+ the noise is very obvious, but look at the single white hair in front of Kitty's left eye. It's still easily discernable at ISO 3200. Nearly all the low contrast coffee table texture is gone though.
Hi Steve I just checked out the sensor numbers. Your Fuji F30 has a 1/1.7" sensor and in real numbers that means the sensor is 7.6x5.7mm and each pixel is 2.7 micron square. These numbers say that the signal to noise for a P&S should be quite good.
Bert
(Any bigger the file size would have been too large.)
