Digital Camera FinePix F30

Progress in digital cameras is astonishingly fast, and technological revolutions are occurring one after another. The design concept for Fujifilm's FinePix F30 is “How close can we come to the visual performance of the human eye?” As a result of our efforts, the FinePix F30 is the world's first compact digital camera to achieve ISO 3200 ultra-high sensitivity at full 6.3 megapixel resolution.
As Masahito Iga, who participated in the development of FinePix F30, explains, “Since the previous version, FinePix F10, announced in 2005, achieved sensitivity of ISO 1600, this time we aimed for ISO 3200. At that level of sensitivity, the camera can cope with any trembling in the photo taker's hand and movement of the object he or she is photographing and capture the background even in dark settings and recreate the true atmosphere that the human eye sees.” Junichi Matsuo, who was in charge of designing the FinePix F30, adds, “When photos are taken at high sensitivity levels, image “noise” creeps in, and we really had to work hard to improve the image processing technology to keep the “noise” to an absolute minimum. We succeeded in maintaining the image quality at virtually the same high level as with the F10, with its ISO 1600 sensitivity, but improved all aspects of photo-taking sensitivity.”

Our initiatives to create an environment-friendly camera enabled us to reduce power consumption. With one charging, the F30 can take 580 pictures, versus 500 for the F10. Also, in view of the trend toward tighter regulation of content chemicals and stronger management of the content of products and raw materials, we reinforced our chemical management measures, which began with steps to meet the requirements of the RoHS directive in the F10, to the maximum. As Shuuichi Hanatani of the Quality Engineering & Assurance Division puts it, “We did not stop with investigating content chemicals at our factory but also looked at the materials used in the parts that go into our products and the materials inside the component materials of those parts. This might seem like we were going to extremes; we feel that, as a manufacturer and final assembler of our products, it is our responsibility to go upstream in the supply chain to investigate content chemicals.” Other environmental initiatives included reducing the amount of packaging materials, which previously were uniform in size, to conserve raw materials and reduce the environmental burden at the delivery stage.