Fujifilm Finepix E550 6.3MP with multiple photographers, for consumers who are interested in growing their photography skills, and for photo hobbyists looking for a powerful feature set in a compact body, the FinePix E550 combines the best of point-and-shoot ease with Fujifilm’s trusted image quality.
The camera’s ergonomic, travel-friendly designs and large 2.0-inch LCD screen makes taking–and sharing–pictures easier than ever. In addition, unique zoom capabilities are easily combined with telephoto and wide-angle lens adapters to offer consumers unparalleled performance in the E550 digital camera.
The FinePix E550 offers 6.3 effective megapixels and can capture up to 4,048 x 3,040 recorded pixels (12.3 million) using Fujifilm’s proprietary Super CCD HR (High Resolution) sensor system. To help power this unusual imaging sensor, Fujifilm offers a new, highly effective image processor, which provides two key benefits: incredible speed and drastically reduced noise levels. As a result, the camera is able to capture images with a frame-to-frame time of 1.0 second, and a shutter lag of 0.05 seconds–faster than some professional digital SLRs. Image quality is greatly enhanced, both through the increased color saturation provided by Super CCD, as well as through superior image sharpness and clarity, provided by noise cancellation.
The FinePix E550 offers a 4x optical zoom. Optional 1.94x and 0.76x wide-angle lens adapters may also be used with this model. The camera offers a variety of shooting modes ranging from automatic, manual, programmed AE, aperture or shutter priority AE, macro, to four pre-programmed scene positions (portrait, landscape, sports, night scene). In addition, a continuous shooting mode may be selected, capturing top and final 4 frames at a rate of 3 frames/second, as well as long-period burst mode, at a maximum of 1.6 frames/second, recording up to 40 frames (at 2-megapixel mode only). The FinePix E550 captures movie clips at 30 frames per second at full VGA with sound, with no time limitations.
Helpful consumer’s review
Ok.. I wanted a camera that was light, could fit in my pocket, used the AA batteries or the NIMH AA batteries, and of course could take great pictures. The Canon A95 almost fits the bill, but it used 4 AA batteries while the Fuji and Sony use 2 AA batteries, and is a little too big and heavy.
Anyway, here are the Pros and Cons of each camera.
Fuji E550 Pros:
Great, very sharp pictures. (6 MP) I blew them up to 8 x 10 on my Epson Photo 700 printer and they were stunning! I have never seen such great output on my printer. The Sony DSC W1 is not even in the same league — just look at the head shots on the Steves Digicam site and you will see how much sharper this camera is between the E550 and the DSC W1. As far as color, great color saturation It should be noted that all Fuji cameras tend to shift more toward blue, the Sony shifts more toward green (as do most digital cameras including Canon). Some say this makes grass not look green enough, but to my eye, the grass just looks like a darker green, it still looks green though on a brite sunny day. Skin tones look fine. I shot a pumpkin on the grass in bright daylight. The Sony shot had a yellow-orange pumpkin with light green grass, the Fuji shot had a very orange pumpkin with darker green grass. The Fuji shot was much sharper. I like the Fuji shot much better. Some say that the 6MP default is too compressed, I just don’t see it. And the default compression allows for more pictures on the 512 XD card (over 300 I think).
