I am looking to find a digital camera that, in feel and function, is as close as possible to the traditional film-based manual rangefinders that I have used for years. I'm eager to hear from anyone who has owned a Fuji DS-300/330 as I'm currently deciding between that and the Olympus C2000 or Nikon 950. My pictures are usually made in existing light and the higher the camera's effective ISO-equivalent without noise, the better. I realize that scanning negatives still provides the highest quality option but being able to review images immediately and work without film processing has a strong appeal to me so I'm willing to accept the trade-off. I want as much control over lens openings, shutter speeds and manual focus as possible. I know that the new Olympus and Nikon have a higher resolution CCD than the DS-330 but I also understand that the Fuji CCD is larger, more light sensitive and uses a different transfer method from other digicams. To Fuji DS photographers who have worked with camera in existing light (especially indoors)....how does it do? If I could magically put a 2/3" 2.1 Megapixel CCD in a Leica M6, I'd be in heaven. Which of the existing cameras would come closest to that?

-- Sean Reid (sreid@sover.net), February 19, 1999

Answers

Beside the CCD size and the pixel resolution, one needs to look at the optical properties. The C-2000Zoom has a faster/brighter lens of f/2.0. Even in the telephoto end of the zoom, the maximal aperture is f/2.8. These optical properties should help the resolution compared to the digital camera with a slower lens.

-- Tomoko Yamamoto (tomokoy@charm.net), February 22, 1999.

All other things being equal, larger CCD cells will result in lower noise. There are other technology issues though, including the basic process used to make the chips, and things like charge-transfer method (as you alluded to vis a vis the Fuji). Bottom line, you really can't tell what low-light performance will be like without testing it. It's looking like the CP 950 will end up holding the current low-light crown, given it's ultra-long 8 second exposure time. We saw a fair bit of fixed-pattern noise at that level, but that was with an early prototype. Nikon's told us we should get a final production sample by about the last week of March, so stay tuned until then for the final word on it's low-light performance...

How about it - Any Fuji 330 users out there with relevant experience?

-- Dave Etchells (hotnews@imaging-resource.com), February 25, 1999.

950 & 2000 still don't have final production cameras. I don't trust anything til I see image comparisons with the final cameras, stats can mislead and lie but images can't. :)

-- Benoit (foo@bar.com), February 25, 1999.