Fuji Fine Pix 4900z.

[Stephen]

I was only after some spare Smartmedia cards, the older types, and spotted some on Ebay 128m, 64m, 16m , but they came with a Antler padded Camera case, three NP80 Lithium batteries, two UV filters, and a wide angle convertor of the "fish Eye" barrel distortion type, plus 10x macro lens.

All in excellent as new condition and only £11.50, $19.40 ,
and there is a Fuji Finepix 4900z Digital camera thrown in!!!

All appears to works fine, I had one of these Fuji 4900z before and was very satisfied with performance and features, after all it was an expensive camera in 2001/2. Mainly metal construction, it has full manual controls and focus. And it can take an external power supply, which most cameras do not now.

Needs a data lead and I already have the charger, it is in good clean condition, looked after, clean lens and no dust in the electronic viewfinder. The batteries may have one duff one, as it will be the original, and is after all about twelve years + old.

Compared to modern digital types the max card size is very small, but a nice oddity is the 4900z can take good infra red shots compared to more modern cameras. It also take external flash easily.(Try that on an Olympus Micro 4.3!!)
Lens quality is very high indeed, better glass, and larger elements than many more modern cameras.


Stephen.

[philbirch]

A great find. 2.4mp doesnt sound much these days but a great photo is a great photo. I have ad an A3 print on the wall taken with a 4mp camera, cropped to just under 2.5mp. Its great. There's no reason not to use this little beauty.

I did't know that Fuji used Toshiba's Smartmedia, I thought they only used Xd.

[Deleted]

I shot a photo with a 1.6 megapixel camera that was good enough to be used on the dust jacket of a 6x9 inch book. Color photo cover about 3/4 of the front.

[daveh]

What a super bargain.

My FZ1 looks considerably more battered than that Fuji, but then it has had quite a lot of use. Some people do seem to buy cameras to use and then never actually use them.

The Panasonic FZ1 at 2 megapixels gave excellent results. What is always true is that any camera will only be as good as its lens. I have had one or two lenses that will not produce decent results no matter how well set up the camera is.

Smartmedia cards never were the best, so it's no wonder they didn't survive the test of time.

[Stephen]

The Fuji Finepix 4900z has one of the quirky Fuji manufactured diamond pattern Super CCD targets, which arrange the CCD target pixels in a honey comb pattern.

It's native resolution is 2.4 mega pixels, but the oddity of the processing used by Fuji is it gives a max image of 4.2 megapixel. This is called "interpolation", but is definitely not the same as the interpolation used by the cheap cameras simply to double resolution.

The special processing was required by the pixel arrangement, which gives a very smooth looking max resolution shot, but there are issues, the native 2.4 resolution can actually look sharper!!...but a little less detailed than the larger files, which can be TIFF or Mpeg. The max resolution files have more detail, and handle high lights better.

Another issue was the presence of moire patterns which could appear on certain darker shaded patterned areas, again the diamond CCD caused this, although Fuji did try to process it out. I found it barely showed, unless looked for! Most pictures simply had no trace of the issues.

I believe they dropped the whole Super CCD idea about 2006/7 when they changed to more conventional CCD designs, with a better in camera processing system. As far as I know, no current Fuji has this strange super CCD in use.

At the maximum 4.2 resolution the quality available will print A4+ very easily, you can't tell it as worst or better than Micro 4/3, and it is a touch "smoother" than most higher resolution cameras. I have done 11x14 from the old one.

At the native 2.4 resolution, (2400x1800), it is better than any rival of the same capacity, and very sharp. Blows up to A4, but beyond and pixels begin to show. So cropping potential is reduced.

The 7.8 to 46.8 zoom lens is as good or better than later designs, mainly metal, manual focus by ring, extreme macro, and manual exposure with proper F stops. The Automatic system also uses the full range of F stops,(in 1/3 stops), not just two or three stops like most modern digital automatics.

Fuji did make own brand extension lenses for the 4900z, which worked quite well, but the one that came with the camera is a Bowers brand wide angle .42x generic design, that is best described as a barrel fish eye lens, but in fact is is usable, about doubling the max wide angle, with drop in definition at the corners, but usable, and it has loads of barrel distortion to play with! * see end....

But is also has a 10x macro lens,(the back element of the converter which deliberately unscrews), and that works very well indeed for super macro.

Fuji, later on in the series, tried the XD cards, Smartmedia plus XD, then both XD and SD, then SD.....the Smartmedia are the real nuisance, 128 meg max size, you have to carry spares, which is where we came in buying the cards and getting a free camera!!

Smartmedia cards are not made now by major makers, but are stocked new from China by some suppliers, but at premium prices, see Ebay! The 4900z has a hidden option, with the side door open, an adapter can be inserted to use Multi media cards, XD and SD cards, the camera can actually handle them. The viewfinder display does not show correct value though, and it is awkward with the adapter sticking out.

I can't post samples as yet, the old data cable I had has a worn out plug, and a new one is on order. I don't like to risk a damaged plug in a decent socket, the tiny contacts are too easily damaged. I do not have a Smartcard reader to PC either nowadays, I will have a look for one on Ebay...probably it will cost as much as the camera!!

Stephen.

I should mention that barrel distortion is totally treatable in the Gimp, Photoshop, or other equivalent digital darkrooms, either built in or as an extension. The processing loses a fraction at the edge, and is adjustable to give true lines on the edges. I am always surprised that such post processing is not more used or known about....and it cures pin cushion as well!

[philbirch]

Thanks for the information on this camera Stephen. Fuji really had good ideas, but unless they let a third party manufacture the ccd's they were stuck with ridiculously high costs.

Interesting what you say about barrel distortion and photoshop ( & gimp) so how do you reduce it, seeing as it is not known about? Please educate us.

[Stephen]

Very straight forward, The Gimp 2, filter menu, distortion tab, and then a preview pane, with simple sliders to remove the distortion, either barrel or pin cushion.

There are extras like x,y and edge setting plus zoom in to get straight cropped edges, plus re-set.

If the work is critical then you may have to do a sample and check, and re-do till acceptable.

It is extensive enough to unscramble a fish eye view, but the edges will suffer from lack of definition.

Slight lens distortions can be completely removed, the only penalty is slight loss of area at the edges, once cropped,

Stephen

[Stephen]

Only a quick shot to show principle, the shot is from the net, and shows a red line as square, which is distorted in the corrected one. This is only a sampler, with more critical work all the parameters can be adjusted. The bigger filed originals will also work better, more to work with.

Stephen.

[philbirch]

I can square up a fisheye in PS5 using the 'spherize' tool in its minus settings. I'll look for distortion.

I've been using Photoshop since version 2.4 (on floppy disks) (1998) and I'm always learning something new. Thanks.

I'm looking for one of these cams in the pawn shops.

[daveh]

Phototshop can do things (almost) automatically, especially through "Camera-RAW". The following is for a Camera-Raw import, though a similar facility is available through the main body of Photoshop.

Known lenses can be done fully automatically - the programme picks up the lens in use and then applies compensation - just tick the two boxes "Enable Lens..." & "Remove Chromatic....". Vignetting is removed too. Further correction can be applied using the sliders. If the lens is not on the known automatically list the programme can often find it by setting the "Make", in this case Tamron. It then finds the lens. Sometimes, though some lenses have to be found by going through the list that comes up. It would appear that more lenses (and cameras) are being added all the time.

I'm just re-visiting some photos taken in 2007 at Twickenham. They are not the best for illustrating the lens correction facilities (nor for other reasons too - mainly exposure) but as I am doing them it saves me searching out the perfect shot to show what's possible.





Recent cameras often have the corrections applied in camera, at least when saved as a JPG.


p.s. This is Photoshop CS5

[daveh]

Using the fully manual sliders (right tab (profile/manual) on lens correction menu.
Untouched, and the two extremes:

[daveh]

p.s. RAW files will normally open in Camera-RAW, while JPGs will usually go to the main body of the programme. If files are imported via Bridge then Camera-RAW can be selected for any file type.

[Stephen]

The shots show the correction of barrel distortion and perspective to get the windows to correct in line appearance.

The Gimp does not deal in exact profiles for lenses, but it may be available as an add on, and would function as per Photoshop.

Stephen

[Stephen]

As I assumed, The Gimp has several libraries of corrections as add ons, including "GimpLensfun", which features camera and lens profiles as per Photoshop. Lots on the net about using the Gimp for this purpose.
Stephen.

[daveh]

From within the main body of Photoshop CS5:<Filter>, <Lens Correction>
Auto Correction,

Custom,