Yea, upon learning about the new F40 and F50, I started looking around for an F31 instead. I want to give the grand parents something easy to use that will do great shots in various conditions, including in door low light. I tinker and setup a camera before taking a shot, they don't.

MaxRC

DPREVIEW says the new F50 is great. Here is their review by rating. The F50 is nr.2 [www.dpreview.com]

If you click on the review, you can see the difference between the F50 and the F31FD.

PRO7

I have a F30 and am happy with it's features and low-light capability. It's the focus that drives me crazy. I think that I've captured a wonderful shot of my kids only to find it blurry when I upload it. And I know what I'm doing. I've used a lot of cameras in the last 30 years.

Hammers-On

Until better CCD/CMOS technologies emerge, consumer cam manufacturers should stick with 6 megapixels. A good 6 mega pixel sensor combined with a sharp lens can deliver excellent 8 x 10 prints and larger, more than the average user needs. I have been watching the market for years and IMO, 6 was the magic number for the 1/2.5 sensor, the best balance of S/N and detail. All of these 8+ sensors rely heavily on software based noise reduction which tends to smear low contrast detail and reduce saturation with the end result looking like a painting filter in photoshop was applied.

2matrix

I think point & shoot and ultra zoom cameras should stay under 6mp-10mp respectively. Point & shoot cameras should house smaller sensors with ultra zooms holding larger sensors. This would allow camera prices for p&s to come down significantly and allow ultra zooms to truely stand out as a bridge to dslr cameras. As far as sensor size ultra zooms shoud be half the size of dslr's and point n shoots should be half the size of ultra zooms. Right now as I understand it ultrazooms are roughly the same size as p&s cams which is roughly 1/4 the size of a dslr.

demonwolf

I finally saw the movie "Idiocracy" and it frightens me how prophetic it is:

Salesperson: It's got 12 megapixels.

Consumer: Does it take good pictures in low light? How's its focus?

Salesperson: It's got 12 megapixels. You don't need all that faggy [Ed: their phrase] stuff.

Consumer: I'm no fag, I'll take two.

ARP

You fools! Just wait for the Sigma DP1!!! It will blow all Point and Shoots out of the water.

Noobs-R-Us

Well I agree with what everyone has stated. These point and shoots need to stay below 12 megapixels. That's just ridiculous. As a previous poster stated, the problem with these cameras is the focusing, it can really suck a$$ especially if you are indoors and at night.

BostonPimpDaddy

@keyshey: He said "out of the water" which means they must be in the water, not on the water. Sheesh.

bobdobbs

@Noobs-R-Us: are they on the water?

keyshey

@Hammers-On: I love my f30 as well. Best low light p&s next to the Ricoh GRD :D

mangamonster

F4 lens on the DP1... ouch, kinda painful for p&s street shooting. If it were at least 2.8, I'd consider looking. If it were 1.8, I'd buy it before reading the review ;)

mangamonster

@Noobs-R-Us: The sigma DP1 seems to be as big as the Canon G7 or G9. It's nice what they on the website www.sigma-dp1.com about it, but I guess it's gonna cost about 450-550 EUROs...

PRO7

Another sign that people are tiring of noisy high-megapixel cameras is that the prices for the popular Canon PowerShot S5 (8MP) and previous-generation PowerShot S3 (6MP) have been converging. The S5 is $311 on Amazon and the S3 is $280-310.

This despite the S5's much better LCD display, flash hot shoe, higher movie clip limit, higher resolution....and higher noise levels.

Another factor may be that a favorite firmware hack for Canon cameras, CHDK, only runs on the PowerShot S3, and may never run on the S5. It seems the S5 and some other newer Canon digicams use a different operating system, necessitating a huge reverse-engineering effort to port CHDK over. CHDK gives RAW shooting capability to cameras that lack it (i.e., most Canon non-SLRs), along with several other features.

wymea

I have the Fuji F31 and love it. I also refuse to upgrade to the newer models because of noise issues which is a ratio of chip size to number of imagining sensor on that chip. Of course in the larger cameras, they have better algorithms to better compensate for noise, but also more real-estate to work with.

I would buy another Fuji if they recognize they made a niche market in low light compact photography that they could build on. The problem with these camera companies is that they worry about eating their sales of their higher end equipment.
M

BigDaddyM

I have a finepix a610 - I wanted a cheap good digital camera (got it on sale for $90 does 6.1) and it is awesome- esp. because it shoots fast as hell so the pix are really crisp- I haven't tried the f50, but i would be interested to see if it is as bad as all that

entropyman

The point is that Fuji just ditched a following here. I for one specifically bought the F30 for the low light capabilities. I'd buy it again on ebay over the F50, and if Fuji goes back to their original plan, they would find it pay off as more and more people recognize that more magapixels does not mean better quality.

Jeff_was_here

My sis has a fantastic 2MP fuji finepix that takes the sweetest 6x4 photos. It must be 5 years old. They've only just upgraded to a Nikon D40.

Fuji point-and-shoots are the sweetest and now they've told the world to go fruck themselves.

Lets see how that works out for them.

Maxwells_Nylon_Hammer