This content has been moved to the new SeriousCompacts.com.

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The SeriousCompacts.com Flickr Group is off to a great start. The pool now includes photographs by more than 70 photographers representing six continents. In order to encourage the continued growth of our Flickr community, I'm pleased to announce the first Serious Compacts Photo Contest. The assigment for this contest is "Natural Textures". All are welcome to compete and/or vote in the contest, and entry is free.

To compete, simply add your photo to the SeriousCompacts.com Flickr group and tag the entry with "seriouscompacts1".

You can get to the Flickr group by clicking the banner below:



Contest Rules:
- Participants must be members of the SeriousCompacts.com Flickr group.
- Only one photo submission per person.
- You must own the copyright to the image to enter it in the contest.
- Post-processing (with Photoshop, etc) is permitted.
- The camera/lens combination used to take the photo must be compact by your standards.
- Both film and digital camera submissions are welcome.
- Photos entered in the contest must have been taken in April 2008.
- Either the description or tags of each entry should specify the camera (and lens if separate) used to take the photo.

Contest Prizes (in US dollars):
1st Place: $100
2nd Place: $50
3rd Place: $25

The Flickr group is open to submissions at this time, and we will continue to accept entries through 11PM GMT on April 30, 2008. At that time, those of us who author here will post a subset of our favorite entries, and a vote will be held on the blog to determine the winners from those selected photos.*

*For the purposes of the vote, selected entries will be displayed on the blog. Winning entries will also be displayed here. By entering the contest, you agree to have your photo displayed here for these purposes.

Special thanks to Guy Mancuso for letting us announce this contest in the excellent Small Sensor Cameras Forum at GetDPI.com

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - High ISO Noise
Part 3 - Dynamic Range

When I shop for a pocket camera, there are three questions I ask.

1) How well does the camera allow me to do my part? This is largely dependent on features such as those that follow:
- Aperture-priority, shutter speed priority, and true manual mode (independent aperture and shutter speed control)
- Focal length range
- Maximum lens aperture
- RAW capability
- Manual focus capability
- Quality of LCD and/or viewfinder
- Ergonomics
- Physical controls
- Operational speed (including autofocus speed, shutter lag, RAW buffer, etc)
- Camera size

2) How well does the camera do its part when I do mine? This consists of the following:
- Lens sharpness, distortion, contrast, bokeh, color
- Sensor ability to capture detail in optimal light
- Sensor detail relative to noise in suboptimal light
- Sensor dynamic range (effect of lens omitted here for discussion)
- Sensor effects on color
- Presence and effectiveness of image stabilization
- Battery life
- Weather resistance

The two categories above are largely what define the "seriousness" of a compact to me. Yet there is another category.

3) How well does the camera do its part if I don't want to do my part? Here we consider such features as face detection, which are of greatest importance to the person who doesn't want complete control over the picture-taking process.

One area which broadly falls under categories 2 & 3 is that of in-camera JPEG handling. There is no doubt that some compact camera photographers prefer to do "serious" work while shooting in JPEG mode, whereas others prefer RAW. For the former group, the in-camera handling of JPEGs is critical and raises the following questions:
- How flexible are in-camera settings for sharpness and noise reduction?
- How flexible are in-camera settings for color and contrast?
- What other operations is the camera performing with regards to tone mapping, and how much control can I exert over these?

What does all this have to do with the Fuji F100fd, and does the F100fd deserve to be called a "serious compact"? The second question is worth asking because the F100fd lacks important features from category 1, namely control of aperture/shutter speed and RAW capability. In this sense, it isn't a very serious compact at all. It is the heir of the F20/F40 more so than that of the more capable F30. Yet, having viewed a number of image samples from the F100fd, it is clear to me that this camera has the potential to produce "serious" results. In fact, despite having left out aperture and shutter speed controls, Fuji is referring to the F100fd as "the ultimate ‘F Series’ digital camera."

Boiled down to it's essence, the F100fd offers the promise of two potentially exciting capabilities. First, it is said to have a 1/1.6" 8th Generation Super CCD sensor capable of both recording 12MP of detail as well as maintaining high detail relative to noise at high ISO values in low light. Second, Fuji claims that "[the wide dynamic range] technology, now perfected in the EISA Award-winning FinePix S5 Pro, has been brought to the consumer in the FinePix F100fd." Before dismissing these claims out of hand, one ought to give Fuji the respect they are due. In terms of detail/noise, Fuji truly brought high ISO performance to compact cameras with the F10/11 and refined this capability with the F30. With regards to high dynamic range imaging, Fuji again successfully pushed the field with their S3 and S5 DSLRs. However, with today's technology, the F100fd's 5x zoom and shirt pocket size means a small sensor size; and while 1/1.6" is larger than most other small sensors, it isn't that much larger. Putting 12MP in a small sensor means a tiny sensel size. Part 2 of this series will address the question, "Can the tiny-senselled F100fd have a detail/noise performance similar to that of the 6MP Fuji F30?" Part 3 will address the F100fd dynamic range claims. Disclaimer: I have no inside information from Fuji, nor have I had the priviledge to yet test the F100fd. What follows is simply a discussion of the known technology with a measured dose of good-natured speculation.

We've just created a Serious Compacts Flickr Group as a place for readers of this blog to share photos and discuss common interests. If you look at the menu at the top of this blog, you'll see a link to the group.

Even if you primarily use another photo sharing site such as PBase, SmugMug, or Picasa Web Albums, joining Flickr is a free and easy way to interact with many interesting groups including ours. After joining Flickr, use any of the simple Flickr upload tools to get your photos into Flickr. AFter joining the Serious Compacts Group on Flickr, you'll be able to send any of your Flickr photos to the group by using the "Send to Group" option shown above each of your photos as shown below.



Hope to see some of you sharing thoughts and photos there soon!

We have renamed this site as Serious Compacts. This was done to reflect our primary focus, which is on advanced compact cameras, i.e. compact cameras for photographers. The old name, Amin Foto, also seemed less appropriate since I am no longer the sole blog author. Björn Utpott has kindly agreed to contribute to the site, and we will be featuring other contributors as time goes along. Please update your any bookmarks with the new site address, www.seriouscompacts.com.

Addendum: Unfortunately, migrating the domain from AminPhoto.blogspot to AminFoto and then SeriousCompacts has had the unfortunate side effect of breaking all the links to old material in Google searches. This will likely get worked out as the new site is indexed. In the meanwhile, if you are looking for any old material, the search box in the upper left corner of the page should take you there.

Serious Compacts is a photography site focused on the "serious" use of compact cameras.

These days it seems that many people associate serious photography with the use of large, heavy gear. Our site features testing and discussion of the remarkable compact tools available to photographers. We also highlight some of the outstanding work being done with this gear.

From an equipment standpoint, we are of course interested in advanced compact cameras, i.e. cameras which offer full manual controls, RAW, and other special capabilities. However, our interest extends to include quality photography achieved with any compact cameras, advanced or otherwise.

Individual site contributors may have differing takes on what is "compact." Discussion of large gear is primarily limited to that which is relevant to the compact shooter (eg, a "shootout" between a particular set of large and small cameras), though we reserve the right to occasionally go well off-topic =).