I had a bit of a soft spot for the Fujifilm FinePix S7000, which, along with the visually identical S20 Pro, wore the crown of Fujifilm's sub-DSLR range until today. But almost two years old and based on a chassis a couple of years older still, it's time for an upgrade. Fujifilm's answer is the S9500 Zoom and its surprise headline feature is a new nine megapixel SuperCCD HR sensor chip.
Fujifilm's FinePix S9500 Zoom is kitted out with the lates 9MP SuperCCD HR sensor to really make you think hard about whether to opt for a starter DSLR.
The new sensor is a 1/1.6 inch type, making it marginally greater in area than the S7000's 6 megapixel 1/1.7 inch chip, but marginally smaller than the 8MP 2/3rd chip that the majority of the S9500's competitors use.
Being a 'HR' variant of Fujifilm's unique SuperCCD sensor family, the S9500's sensor, which is shared with cheaper E900 Zoom model also launched today, there is no pixel 'duality' as seen in SR examples of SuperCCDs. You can regard the sensor as being physically conventional, but the the photosite array is rotated 45 degrees.
The more compact of Fujifilm's new niners is the FinePix E900 Zoom
As the position of each photosite doesn't represent the location of an image pixel, as in a conventional sensor chip, the final image is reconstructed or interpolated and this has tempted Fujifilm to provide image resolutions exceeding the actual number of pixels in the past, typically doubling the actual sensor resolution.
The FinePix five megapixel S5600 Zoom is also launched today.
This has been a mildly controversial policy, even though tests show that some resolution gain can be measured. But with the three new models launched today, for the first time that I can recall, resolution doubling isn't offered as a shooting option in a SuperCCD camera. The logic probably goes that nine megapixels is enough! The chip has approximately nine million (effective) photosites and the maximum resolution image size is 3,488 x 2,616 pixels or 9.12MP.
Tilting monitor screen
The S9500 is also Fujifilm's first 'bridge' camera (as in high-spec fixed lens camera alternative to a DSLR) that offers a tilting LCD display monitor. At 1.8 inches, it's rather unfashionably compact, but I know I'd swap a fixed larger size screen for a smaller one that tilted.
Reminiscent of the Olympus E-10/20 and C-8080WZ, the FinePix S9500 has a fold-out style LCD monitor which can't be twisted or turned.
However, the S9500's screen is not as flexible as some of its rivals as it only tilts up/down. You can't turn the screen sideways. This is the same arrangement as the old Olympus E-10/20 series and the current Olympus C-8080WZ. The lack of flexibility is likely to because the rights to the ideal flip-out and twist, camcorder screen style, arrangement, is owned by a competitor.
And here is a straight on rear view with the screen parked.
Nevertheless, even the S9500's screen's limited options covers the key viewpoints where you want to raise the camera and see over the head of people in front, as well as for waist level candid photography and low angle shooting convenience.
Here is a more detailed view of the back of the S9500 with the LCD monitor deployed.
New 10.7x wide/tele zoom lens
Another significant upgrade compared to the outgoing S7000 and S20 Pro is the S9500's new 28-300mm (equivalent) zoom lens, offering over 10x zooming range starting from a more usefully wide angle starting point. Despite the long range of the zoom, it only dims to f/4.9 from its wide end maximum aperture of f/2.8.
The lens barrel now has a manual and, much-welcomed, mechanical action zooming ring rather than buttons, though the servo manual focus ring has been positioned closest to the body, which is unconventional and could need getting used to.
This side view shows the S9500's screen in profile and note the generous width of the manual mechanical zooming ring in front of the manual servo focus ring.
With such a long telephoto zoom, the absence of an image stabiliser could be an Achilles heal with some potential buyers, but to counter this Fujifilm are hinting that the lens is of particularly high quality for its type. Reviews will soon test out this claim of course.
The S9500's built in pop-up flash deploys with good height to minimise red-eye problems.
Extended ISO sensitivity
Reviewers have been universally impressed with the noise-suppression achieved by the compact FinePix F10 recently and Fujifilm's know-how in this area has enabled them to feature a maximum ISO of 1600, which compares with just 800, or even 400, in some competing models. Previous FinePix models have required lower resolution settings to enable higher ISO modes, but this isn't the case here. Minimum ISO setting is 80, which also represents an improvement over previous FinePix models that were limited to a minimum ISO200 setting.
Viewed from the top, the S9500 retains a similar layout to previous FinePix models like the S20 Pro and S7000.
A traditional strength of FinePix cameras has been in the area of movie recording and if the usual smooth 30fps quality is undiminished, the ability to manually zoom while videoing will be another nice bonus.
Finally, if you were wondering, Fujifilm has sensibly retained a Compact Flash memory card slot that can take Type I and II cards as well as Microdrives. Fujifilm's own xD card type is also catered for via a second slot.
Pricing and availability
UK pricing hasn't been released at the time of writing, but in the US the S9000 (S9500 in the UK) has a guide orice of US$699.95, the S5200 (S5600 in the UK) is US$399.95 and the E900 is US$499.95.
In the US the S9000 will ship in September and the S5200 and E900 will follow in October.
Fujfilm UK indicate that the S5600 will be available in September, the S9500 in late August or early September, but no ETA yet for the E900.
The superzoom bridge camera sector is getting quite crowded after the recent arrivals of the Samsung Pro815 and Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30. We can't wait to try then all out!
