Product Reviews

An exciting time is in store for followers of the digital camera scene over the coming months. With the leap to two million-pixel CCDs already upon us there's bound to be an avalanche of products hitting the market soon. Two companies have already committed themselves; one of these is Fujifilm with its first 'double-megapixel' model.

The MX-2700 follows the stylish design of the MX-700 (reviewed issue 51, p136) with its slick aluminium finish and unorthodox, one-handed operation. Both the thumb-operated mode selection dial at the rear and the menu system are intuitive, the 2in LCD is crisp and boasts a rapid refresh, and a quicker than average switch-on and warm-up time makes the MX-2700 more like a normal 35mm device in use. Those with large hands, however, could find it hard to keep their fingers away from the flash on the front.

Elsewhere on the camera, you'll find a video-out port for piping a slide show through the composite video port on your TV or video, a serial port for connecting the camera to the PC, as well as an optical viewfinder and mono LCD. The latter allows you to save battery life if you don't need the colour screen all the time.

Behind the Fujinon optics sits a CCD containing an incredible 2.3 million pixels, which produces a final image resolution of 1,800 « 1,200. Compared even to the outstanding Canon PowerShot Pro 70 (reviewed issue 54, p171), which produces images 1,536 x 1,024 in size, this is impressive. However, with such high resolutions come large file sizes. In fact, in uncompressed format, an 1,800 x 1,200 24-bit colour image is 6.2Mb in size, so for a digital camera to be able to carry a sensible number of images at this size it either has to have lots of memory or compress the images heavily.

Where most digital cameras prefer a compromise between the two, using a small degree of compression to squeeze as much as possible from their SmartMedia or CompactFlash cards, Fujifilm has chosen to supply just an 8Mb SmartMedia memory card and has

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set the automatic lossey compression of its images very high to compensate. This approach means you'll be able to fit up to nine images on the card, but the result of the 7:1 compression is images of a much lower quality than the technology is capable of producing. Examine the pictures you take closely and you'll find that the distinct compression artefacts prevent the camera from picking up fine detail in areas of similar colour. This in itself would not be so much of a bad thing if you could reduce the amount of compression further but, unlike the Pro 70, the MX-2700 provides no way of doing this.

Admittedly, the Pro 70 is aimed at a slightly different market to the MX-2700 and costs considerably more, but a side-by-side comparison demonstrates that having a high pixel count isn't an automatic ticket to better quality. And while comparing its results with the output of its leading rivals - the likes of the Olympus C-840L (reviewed issue 47, p167) and the Minolta DimÅge EX Zoom 1500 (reviewed issue 53, p177) - showed it to be somewhat ahead, it wasn't by as much as we'd expected. Again, the high level of JPEG compression got in the way of potentially excellent results.

Another disappointing side to the MX-2700 is its lack of an optical zoom. It does feature a digital zoom, but this is a bit of a cheat as the resolution, and therefore the quality, of the images degrades the more zoom used. I was also disappointed by the performance of the flash, which in demanding conditions - outside in the dark just two metres from the subject matter - proved underpowered. Other than this, the camera sports all the features you'd expect from a compact digital. There's a self-timer, a macro mode for taking close-ups, and various artificial effects such as sepia tones which can be applied to images.

Fortunately for the MX-2700, Fujifilm has chosen to pitch it at a remarkably sensible price. I'd normally expect the first device boasting new technology to be expensive, but at just £511 the MX-2700 is closer in price to cameras like the Olympus C-840L than anticipated. The big problem with the MX-2700 is that it doesn't live up to its 2.3 megapixel billing. Presumably the company is relying on big numbers to sell its cameras, but the reality is that better quality can be achieved by combining a lower resolution with less or no compression. And bearing in mind the inherent file size of such high-resolution images, it looks like the new ultra-high resolution wave of cameras will fail to live up to their promise until, or unless, manufacturers begin to ship them with much more memory.