To compare noise levels under real-life conditions we shot this scene with the Fujifilm FinePix F50fd and Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33 the within a few moments of each other using each of their ISO settings in Auto modes. The lenses on each camera were adjusted to deliver the same field of view. The image left was taken with the Fujifilm FinePix 50fd at 9mm f6.4 and with a sensitivity of 100 ISO; the original JPEG measured 4.46MB. The crops are taken from an area just below and to the left of the centre and presented here at 100%. The Fujifilm FinePix F50fd captures a decent amount of detail at its lowest 100 ISO sensitivity and, despite an increase in noise, keeps hold of most of it at 200 ISO. At 400 ISO though, an increase in noise and noise reduction have greatly reduced fine details into featureless areas, and from this point onwards the quality plummets. At 800 ISO there's a big drop in detail and saturation, while at 1600 ISO and above the results suffer greatly from undesirable artefacts.

To be fair though, this is not dissimilar to the Panasonic Lumix FX33 crops shown alongside, although subjectively speaking we'd say the FX33 has a preferable result at 800 ISO. Either way, you'd really want to use both cameras at their lowest sensitivities and avoid the higher ones for anything other than emergency use.

This is par for the course for compacts these days, but we hoped for better from the F50fd, which is the successor to the class-leading F30 / F31fd models. These older cameras shunned the trends for higher resolutions, instead favouring 6 Megapixel resolution and better high sensitivity performance. In our Panasonic FX30 noise page you can see it and the F30's results for the same scene - albeit on a different day - and it's clear while the new F50fd is generating bigger files, it may not actually be recording much greater detail than the F30 at higher ISOs. We'd certainly say the F30 at 400 and 800 ISO records more fine detail than the F50fd - just look at the fencing around the tennis court for example.

So while the F50fd can out-resolve the F30 at its lowest resolution, we're afraid the jump to 12 Megapixels sees the quality fall more quickly at higher sensitivities. The F50fd is no worse than other compacts these days, but it's not a high sensitivity leader like the earlier F30 / F31fd.

Now for more real-life examples across its sensitivity range, check out our Fujifilm F50fd sample images page.

Fujifilm FinePix F50fd		Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33
100 ISO		100 ISO
200 ISO		200 ISO
400 ISO		400 ISO
800 ISO		800 ISO
1250 ISO not available		1250 ISO
1600 ISO		1600 ISO
3200 ISO (scaled from 6 Megapixels)		High Sensitivity (1600 ISO here, scaled from 3 Megapixels)
6400 ISO (scaled from 3 Megapixels)		3200 and 6400 High Sensitivity options not possible under these conditions