Photography by Mike Mander | S200EXR First Tests

S200EXR First Tests

September 13th • University of British Columbia

These are my first tests with Fuji's new S200EXR camera. Boasting a 30-436mm zoom and Fuji's latest 12 megapixel 'EXR' sensor, this camera is the successor to the Fuji S100fs that I've been shooting with for some time. All the images in this gallery were shot RAW+JPEG, however at this time nobody (not even Fuji) has software that can open the raw files. All the shots in this gallery were taken with the camera in its 6 megapixel EXR-DR mode, dynamic range set at 400%. The amount of detail, from shadows to highlights, that this camera can capture with its unique hardware-assisted EXR-DR mode is astounding. It will be very interesting to eventually examine the raw image files to see how much more dynamic range they might have when compared to these JPEGs!

Alas, not every aspect of this camera is an upgrade from the S100fs. Fuji has removed the very useful tilting rear LCD in favour of a slightly improved, but fixed, new rear LCD and inexplicably (much to my dismay) they have also taken away the camera's orientation sensor! I shoot many verticals, as you'll see here, and having to manually rotate all the images is a pain. They have also removed the studio flash-sync port, but at least one can still mount a PC adapter on the hot-shoe. Lastly, due to the slightly smaller sensor size, the camera only goes to 30.5mm on the wide end, compared to my S100fs which goes down to 28mm.

Apart from those few complaints, the camera is a joy to use with a very sharp lens, much improved ability to AF in low-light, superb dynamic range and very low noise levels. (27-29 @ ISO 800!)