I’ve offered up the sum of my thoughts on the Fuji HS10. And have a collection of photos to support my reviews. But I didn’t scientifically review the camera. No pixel peeping from me. All I care about is what I get on my screen to upload to Flickr. And with that I’ve been very happy. Of course, I’ll be posting plenty more photos and videos from it.
But if you do need to read a review that’s more about pixels, then DPReview is the place to go. They’ve just reviewed the HS10 as part of a Super Zoom grand comparison. Where did the Fuji come? Middle of the road. That’s about in keeping with the other professional reviews I’ve read. Which camera won the test? The Panasonic FZ35, the very one I sold to buy the Fuji.
I’m not surprised. Nor am I regretting my swap. There are different factors such as price included, and the Fuji is by far and away the priciest in the test, which counts against it. The Fuji also has a few flaws, which I was aware of before buying the camera. They don’t affect what I want to do, or expect from, the camera. So it’s a non issue. They have plenty of nice things to say too though.
The Fujifilm HS10 is at currently $440 the most expensive camera in this group test but looking at the spec sheet the premium over the competition seems justified…
The HS10′s output is, viewed at a 100%, not too pretty, showing a mixture of noise, noise reduction and other sharpening artifacts. Again, this should not make you worry too much if you don’t usually produce large prints of your pictures….
With its impressive feature set and abundance of external controls the HS10 is almost in a different class of camera than the rivals in this test….
Reviewing my own photos, I personally prefer the output from the Fuji, but this is a subjective matter. I am surprised a little though by their conclusions regards noise. From my experience, I’ve gotten much nicer, and less noisy, photos from the Fuji. But again, science v screen. My photos are handheld, whilst perhaps DPReview used a tripod. This can affect the results. I also don’t examine the photos at pixel level, prefering to see how they look on my monitor.
The photos below, click here for the FZ35 image on the left and here for the HS10 image on the right, are the best comparisons I can offer. It’s not an entirely fair comparison. I’d say there was actually more light in the left hand image, but there are darker walls which show up noise more easily.
But at the end of the day, even if I prefer the Fuji’s results, there’s not an awful lot between them in noise. There is, in my opinion, a fair bit between them in other areas, and mostly in favour of the Fuji.
