I found this very interesting. Not only did I not know of or anticipate
the use of ND filters in the exposure system but I wouldn't have thought
them necessary at all. I had assumed they were using electronic
shutters at the chip level and would be able to accommodate any
brightness level via very fast exposure. Obviously, there's much I
don't understand about how these things work... eg, why my Mynolta A1
uses both a mechanical and electronic shutter, why it can sync with its
built-in flash at any shutter speed but recommends only up to 1/250 for
Mynolta external flash units... even though I know it works faster than
that with the flash units I use. Maybe it's manual vs auto exposure.
Chuck Norcutt
Moose wrote:
> C.H.Ling wrote:
>> It is a little strange, for ISO800 test the F31fd was using 1/340s F5.6 but
>> the F200EXR was using 1/75s F12! It will sure hurt the details.
>>
>
> Hard to fault the testers. The F200 is in the line of fully automatic
> Fuji F series cameras. so far, only the F11, 30 and 31 have any
> aperture/speed preferred and manual controls settings. So if they want
> to take a test shot with their standard setup and lighting, they get
> what the camera gives them.
>
> On the other hand, can we be sure f12 is a bad choice?
>
> I think it is also possible that the Fuji engineers aren't actually
> stupid. Oh my, looking further into the review, we learn:
>
> "Like many compact cameras, the F200 only allows only two aperture
> settings at each position of the lens (fully open and fully open minus
> three stops, by way of a combined physical stop and ND filter)."
>
> So, f12 is just the smaller "stop" at the particular focal length
> chosen, and not a "true" f12 focal ratio of aperture and focal length.
> It's a shame the true , useful meaning of f-stop will now disappear, at
> least in digicams. On the other hand, it's a smart solution to the
> exposure vs. diffraction blurring problem. I think some high end Canon
> digis have, or have had, built in ND filters as part of their AE system
> for years. I wouldn't be surprised if it's fairly common, but
> unannounced, practice.
>
> Looks like all the theoretical calculations may be at least partly
> useless for these tiny sensor cameras, as well as DOF calculations.
>
> A lot of people bash the dpreview reviews, but read throughly, they
> contain pretty much all the important stuff. I often won't agree with
> their conclusions/ratings because my priorities difffer, but I can
> usually find out what I need to know for my own evaluation.
>
> Moose
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