Being a natural-born cynic, I take the hype from the camera manufacturers with a large pinch of salt. However, having dropped my digital compact and needing a replacement, my attention was drawn by the innovative concept of the imaging sensor featured in the Fujifilm F200 EXR.

According to the blurb on the Fujifilm website, the Super CCD EXR is a ‘three in one’ sensor giving the combination of high resolution, high sensitivity and wide dynamic range. To be honest, I thought all digital sensors did this anyway, but obviously not.

I know high resolution and high sensitivity are important qualities, but the promise of delivering a wide dynamic range had an extra appeal for me.

I’ve always been disappointed with the limitations of my now broken camera’s ability to capture highlight detail in a way that was possible with film. Detail that I could see at the time just seemed to vanish and I would either get good shadow detail or good highlight detail but not both at the same time. I know the human eye is something special and no digital sensor could hope to compete with it, but never the less I’d always expected better.

Anyway, reading on, it says the Super CCD EXR sensor uses Dual Capture Technology to take two pictures simultaneously, one at low sensitivity and one at high sensitivity; both are merged instantly and automatically by the camera. The result is images with excellent shadow and highlight detail even in very contrasty lighting conditions.

That was the clincher for me, so I took the plunge and bought it. Since then I have spent time trying out the F200 EXR in a variety of conditions to see if the hype was justified.

The F200 can be set up to prioritise either Resolution, High ISO and Low Noise or Dynamic Range. Or you set EXR Auto mode where the camera assesses the scene in front of it and decides which settings - including EXR sensor mode - are needed to give the best result.

As it was the promise of wide dynamic range images that appealed to me, I set Dynamic Range Priority shooting mode. In this mode, you can choose the Dynamic Range parameter by using the f (photo mode button). This gives the option of Auto Dynamic Range control or you can set 100%, 200%, 400% or 800% in the Provia/Standard film stimulation mode. The 800% strongest option is not available in Velvia/Vivid or Astia/Soft settings.

I shot a variety of scenes in different lighting conditions to try out the effectiveness of the F200’s Dynamic Range (DR) control.

For my little trial, I fixed the camera onto a tripod and took pictures of each scene in all five Dynamic Range settings for later comparison on the computer. There was a two-fold reason for this. Firstly, I wanted to see the strengths of the four individual Dynamic Range settings and secondly, I’d get an idea whether it could be relied upon in its Auto mode or would I have lend a hand and set it manually.

The results were very interesting. In low contrast scenes, the benefits of EXR technology were not needed. The low contrast means that the two images captured at different levels would be relatively similar and merging them wouldn’t produce an image significantly better than a conventional digital sensor. Here the camera in its Auto DR range behaved impeccably.   

But once you start tackling scenes with greater contrast the point of the EXR sensor is obvious and definitely worthwhile. I took a series of images of a church interior where it is usually a challenge to get detail in the shadows as well as in the highlights. My shots were done on a clear day with high cloud taking the edge off the sun so while contrast was high it was not extreme.

Looking at the 100% DR images in isolation, if I only had these I’d be perfectly happy with the results. There is plenty of interior detail to enjoy and the highlights are more than acceptable.

Highlight details got better on the 200% DR images but the most tangible benefits came at the 400% and 800% DR settings. For example, the lead detail of a backlit windows that was just about visible at 100% DR and 200%DR was faithfully recorded at the 400% DR and 800% settings. The EXR Auto setting gave a result that is in between the 200% and 400% settings. Impressive.

I then set macro and shoot some flower images. I thought a sunlit yellow flower would be a good test, but the differences between the five shots are minimal, which shows how good the EXR sensor can be even at its default setting.

A white flower in the shade was my next victim and here the EXR system showed how well it does work. There is a small sunlit corner at the bottom left. At the 100% DR setting the petal is pure white with no detail. There is more detail at 200% DR and in the Auto DR mode, and by the time you get to the two higher settings plenty of petal detail is visible.

Incidentally, all my pictures are straight out of the camera with no computer editing.

To really test out Fujifilm’s sensor technology, I did some landscape pictures of a rape field at sunrise with the sun within the picture.

Photographing scenes direct into the sun is notoriously tricky. You either get a near-black foreground with a nice sun, or a detailed foreground but with an overexposed sky.

The F200 EXR did a great job of the demanding exposure with detail in the foreground but the impressive thing is how the Dynamic Range system dealt with the intense highlights around the sun’s disk itself. You can see at the 100% DR setting that the sky around the sun is almost burnt out and how at the higher DR settings of 400% and 800% you can see much more detail. This is an amazing performance given the extreme contrast of the area around the sun.

Having tried the F200 EXR in a variety of conditions, I’m pleased to say that Fujifilm’s Dynamic Range system does work and records strong highlight detail that would disappear with other cameras.

In most situations, I’d be happy to leave the camera in its Auto EXR setting but when the sun is really strong or when there’s powerful backlighting, I know setting 400% DR or 800% DR would give the highlight detail that I want to see. Nice one, Fujifilm!