Digital Home Thoughts: Fujifilm Announces Five Cameras

"What you just heard was the sound of five new FinePix cameras popping out of Fujifilm's doors. Yippie! If all goes well, we'll be seeing these SDHC-loving / xD-hating babies from late August. Let's start working through the list: the 12 megapixel, 720p-video (24fps) F300EXR boasts auto-focus speeds that are "as good as" DSLRs, all thanks to the camera's hybrid auto-focus system -- a combination of Contrast AF (as used on most compacts) and Phase Detection AF (as found on most DSLRs)"

Fujifilm has launched a number of cameras, and the two most interesting are the F300EXR (pictured above) and the Z800EXR. Both use Fujifilm's 12 megapixel EXR sensor, and both pack a hybird AF system that somehow manages to pack a phase detect AF sensor (usually a separate module in DSLRs) onto the imaging sensor. I'm not sure how that is done, but it could be the imaging sensor being used to read specific peaks and valleys of incoming light.

While both the F300EXR and Z800EXR share similar electronics, both have differing form factors; the F300EXR is a bigger camera that falls in the "travel zoom" category, packing a 24-360mm equivalent lens, compared to the folded optics 35-175mm equivalent lens in the much slimmer Z800EXR. The Z800EXR also packs a 3.5" touchscreen. Both cameras do 720p video at 24FPS. I'm looking forward to see how both cameras turn out, especially with the EXR sensor and the hybrid AF system.

Going down the series is quite a bit less exciting, there's the Z80, which is the little brother to the Z800EXR. The main difference seems to be a smaller LCD screen, as well as having a conventiional 14 megapixel sensor. There is also the budget JX280, at US$150, which also houses a conventional 14 megapixel sensor, but in a more traditional form factor with a 28-140mm equivalent lens.

Then finally there is the S2800HD, the latest in the line of Fujifilm's small-ish big zoom cameras. They're a little smaller to cameras like the Nikon P100, but still have a significant zoom lens. In this case, the S2800HD has an 18x zoom lens that goes from 28mm to 504mm in 35mm terms. It's also cheap too at US$260.