Review Fujifilm FinePix REAL 3D W3 - Handling and Conclusion
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Handling & Other Impressions
This camera is heavier and bigger than other cameras. But it has to be bigger. There has to be a certain distance between the lenses for the 3D effect. Because of this it is not so easy to carry it around like other smaller cameras. But this is more a limitation of 3D and not of the camera. For a good realistic 3D effect the lenses need to be that far apart - about the distance of your eyes. Everything else is just a somehow 3D.
It was hard to hold it correctly at the beginning. Often I ended up covering one of the lenses a bit with a finger. But I got used to this very quickly and now I do not even think of this problem anymore. I even like to hold the camera like this. But I always use the hand strap with this camera for good reason.
The lens cover was confusing at the beginning but great afterwards. You have to move it down before you can take a photo or if you want to switch the camera on. After I while I had no problems at all anymore with this. I even like it since it is not one of those fragile automatic solutions that block very often.
The build quality outside gave a very solid impression. Even from the design I like it.
Battery life was reasonable for me with about 100 to 140 shots at the highest quality settings. But you have to understand that I just use the 2D monitor display (you can switch at the power management settings between 2D or 3D) and never use the monitor to watch photos after the shot. The power management settings are 2D monitor, 3D monitor and 3D monitor combined with quick auto focus. They work only for the time before you press the shutter button. When you press the shutter button the scene is shown in 3D and also the photo you took is shown in 3D afterwards. I found this good. From people displaying photos in 3D on the camera monitor I heart complaints about a short battery live. I cannot confirm this since I always use my computer to display the photos. Charging the battery took me around two and a half hours.
The start-up time was quick enough for me. I measured about three to four seconds.
What I did not like so much was this wheel for the settings on the upper right side. Often I switched to a different setting by accident. The wheel is a great idea but it is too easy to change the settings by accident.
It would have been nice if I could set the internal clock to 24 hours display.
The 3D monitor looks interesting. It measures 3.5 inches (8.89 cm) and has about 1.15 million color dots. But honestly I did not use it to watch anything in 3D. For me it is simply too small. 3D needs display size. There is some flicker at this monitor. But what really annoyed me was that the shown photo gets sharp only after shown for about three, four seconds. So the camera seems to need this time to adjust the output. Because of this my eyes looked first for a while at a not really sharp photo and this was not a nice feeling.
Shooting in 3D is a bit different from 2D. You need a scene that is good for 3D and you always have to keep a certain distance. But here training helps and to learn this was perhaps the most fun for me with this camera. The focus range for 2D macro photos is from 8 cm to 80 cm (0.3 ft to 2.6 ft) and at 3D shooting mode from 38 cm to 70 cm (1.2 ft to 2.3 ft). The by Fujifilm recommended minimum shooting distance for 3D with the normal wide setting is 1.3 m (4.3 ft) and for macro 48 cm (1.6 ft). One thing you will have to learn too is that in 3D you cannot shoot in portrait mode but only in landscape mode. For some scenes this is a real handicap. But this is a general 3D recording problem. On the other hand even at 2D video recording you have this portrait mode problem with every camera - so nothing really new. You will just have to get used to it when taking 3D shots.
You have special shooting modes because of the two lenses. Besides the typical scene modes found in most modern digital cameras like sunset, sports, beach, night (13 in total) the Fujifilm has some unique modes because of its dual lens design. They all work only in 2D. One is Tele/Wide were you can shoot with one lens zoomed and at the same time with the other in normal wide mode. A 2-Sensitivity mode allows you to capture two images at different ISO settings simultaneously and a 2-Color mode allows you to shoot two photos with the color setting F-Standard and F-Chrome (has more vibrant colors) at the same time. Besides these 2 lens modes, settings like interval shooting, face detection (2D only) are also available.
Image storage size at the highest quality settings is not small. The two 10-Megapixel CCD of the REAL 3D W3 create a lot of data. I need about 10 MB for the 3D MPO file and about 5 MB for the additional (optional) 2D JPG file at a 3,648 x 2,736 (4:3) resolution. This is the highest possible resolution. So you will not get very far with the internal memory of about 34 MB. But much data need much space. I have about 8 TB disk space on my computer. So no problem for me. But you can reduce the quality and resolution settings. Many people reported that you do not see much quality loss. And you do not need to save a 2D photo at the same time when you take a 3D photo. With freeware you can extract it afterwards out of the MPO file. At this occasion a hint. You will not see thumbnails for the mpo files for instance in the explorer of Windows 7. At the page Fujifilm & Other Download Links at this site you can find information where you can download a fix for WinXP, Vista and Win7 - use it at your own risk. It worked for me on Win7 32 Bit without any problems. I did not check the other OS.
Video storage size at the highest quality setting HD1280 is about 4 GB for 10 minutes. That is a lot of space. With the firmware version 2.0 you can use an Economy Mode to reduce this size. But in my view the video quality suffers too much then. More information about the needed memory space at different recording settings you can find at specifications that you can download at the page Fujifilm & Other Download Links at this site. There you also find download links to my sample video files.
My Conclusion
In the end Fujifilm decided what I can write here, it was not up to me.
I bought and paid and hoped and prayed and suffered ;-) I just can tell you what I have experienced with these 4 Fujifilm FinePix REAL 3D W3 samples. I really thought that the cameras are broken and did not know that this is the highest possible Fujifilm quality standard. And I am not joking when I write these words. In the end this is what I had to understand and to accept. I am afraid for me 3D will never be the same after this story. I gave up already the idea to buy as next challenge a 3D video camera and a new 3D monitor. But perhaps you are luckier. I expect a certain minimum quality standard but that is for sure not the case for everyone. So this camera might be great or good enough for many people - perhaps just not for me. Let's continue to sum up my experience. But let me explain first why I created this review.
I read many reviews about this camera on the internet before I bought it. But most reviews just checked 2D. Some even gave me the feeling they did not check anything at all and just tried to lure me there for paid clicks. Then I read a lot of customer opinions. Here I thought mostly the ones with bad experience will write - so forget them. But there are many positive fake comments too. You will find them mostly at sites where they try to sell this camera or have Fujifilm advertisement. If you post there something negative it will disappear as soon as detected. The same is true for some forums. There are many sellers who want to promote the camera and do not like not positive comments there. And in such forums there are people who do not like you if you don't admire their toy. So not always an easy world.
This is why in the end I created this extended review site with my experience without any paid advertisement or any other payment - there is only the Weebly ad on this site (Weebly enables this website here for free). I want to share my experience not just with some words but with some more information like photos and videos. In addition I had the (bad) luck to have 4 camera samples in my hands and not only one - so I had more samples to look at. In addition to the experience with my cameras I checked MANY reviews and output samples of this camera type that I could find on the internet before I came to my conclusion. But back to this - my conclusion.
The sold cameras seem to have a wide quality fluctuation. So it is more or less a lucky draw what one might get - at least this was my feeling. The quality control at the production line seems to be weak. What Fujifilm accepts as their quality standard is a wide range. For my taste a bit too wide. On top of it they are not able to fix a camera because they do not have the tools for it and sent me even back a completely useless camera with the status repaired - do they check anything? On top of it they refused to fix a camera and say somehow "that was it for us - leave us alone". On top of it they sent me as final camera a camera with in the end pretty much the same tilt problem - this was the problem that should have been fixed. The sharpness is still a problem too and now it even has bad pixel at video recording. With some (basic) quality control at the production plant these problems should not exist - at least this is what I think. It was not hard to see the problems. It was only hard to ignore them - at least for me.
I see this camera as a camera for people who are willing to accept the Fujifilm quality standards. This was not easy for me and it was a huge effort to get to the point where I am now - even if the result is still very far from perfect. It is even worse. I think now I have the worst camera of all FinePix REAL 3D W3 samples. But they all were not good. Fujifilm had enough opportunity to send me a working camera but as shown here they never did. In this sense - what is the warranty good for?
Because of all the problems I hardly ever use the camera. I got tired of this hit or miss photo quality were the hits are the exception. And here the biggest problem is the sharpness of the lenses. With software and some work you can correct alignment problems (to a certain extend) but not sharpness problems. So I ended up to take shots with the Fujifilm 3D camera and in addition with my 2D camera from the same scene - just to have a good photo for sure. But this two camera approach was annoying and so I ended up to leave the 3D camera more and more often at home. This poor sharpness did not get better in all the months and with all the REAL 3D W3 cameras I had. I think I really tried every possible camera setting and shooting mode but it did not change anything.
I did not write about the software that comes with the camera - for good reason. I got errors from the coding and crashes. The situation was the same on my WinXP and on my Win7/32 because they were internal software problems of this program and so not OS related. I cannot tell you if it works for others. I guess the software has for instance problems with some region settings. This seems to be not programmed correctly. But I did not spend too much time with it and took it from my system. You will have to check it on your system and perhaps it works. Whatever the outcome will be - you do not need this software. There is great freeware on the internet. Just read about the freeware Stereo Photo Maker at the following link 3D Photos without 3D Camera.
I did not care much about the nice 3D monitor of the camera even if it is an interesting experience. But today we have 3D monitors and 3D TVs and 3D needs a bigger display size. And how should you handle many photos of your collection with this camera and this small display? In addition flicker and the sharpness adjustment lag of some seconds for every shown photo were things I did not really like.
If Fujifilm could fix at least the problems in respect of the photo quality it could be a great 3D camera. I don't know why it is so hard to align axes and I do not know why it is so hard to get the correct sharpness with both lenses or to see bad pixel. Why is it so hard to filter out problem cameras with a simple quality control before they go to the market? For instance it just takes 1 shot of a cross to check for alignment problems. A computer could do this. And bad pixel...
If Fujifilm can overcome these problems and could increase their overall quality standard including the one for the service I really would rate it as great idea and a great product without almost any compromise. I really hope they want and can because there are not many 3D camera options on the market.
If you want to get more information about the old FinePix REAL 3D W1 and how it came to the new W3 camera version check out the link below - it is not on my site so expect ads there. Don't forget to click on the link "to dismal reviews" in the text to see the story about the W1 and the response of Fujifilm to the bad reviews:
Fujifilm introduces Finepix Real 3D W3 camera, we go hands-on
Finally & The End of this Review
If something is missing what you would like to know that I did not cover then please use the contact link at this site to let me know it. Or just let me know what you think in general. In the end I created this site for YOU. I will have to live with the camera I got to meet the Fujifilm customer specifications. Sadly there seems to be no other option and I tried very hard to get a camera that meets at least somehow my specifications - just acceptable sharpness, correct alignment and no bad pixel - nothing special I think.
If there is any change to this story I will update my blog at this site. Perhaps Fujifilm brings out a new 3D camera and is brave enough to send it to me for a review :-))
Feel free to add a link to this review site wherever you want. If you want to stay informed about further developments please add the RSS-Feed at my Blog to your browser.
Handling & Other Impressions
This camera is heavier and bigger than other cameras. But it has to be bigger. There has to be a certain distance between the lenses for the 3D effect. Because of this it is not so easy to carry it around like other smaller cameras. But this is more a limitation of 3D and not of the camera. For a good realistic 3D effect the lenses need to be that far apart - about the distance of your eyes. Everything else is just a somehow 3D.
It was hard to hold it correctly at the beginning. Often I ended up covering one of the lenses a bit with a finger. But I got used to this very quickly and now I do not even think of this problem anymore. I even like to hold the camera like this. But I always use the hand strap with this camera for good reason.
The lens cover was confusing at the beginning but great afterwards. You have to move it down before you can take a photo or if you want to switch the camera on. After I while I had no problems at all anymore with this. I even like it since it is not one of those fragile automatic solutions that block very often.
The build quality outside gave a very solid impression. Even from the design I like it.
Battery life was reasonable for me with about 100 to 140 shots at the highest quality settings. But you have to understand that I just use the 2D monitor display (you can switch at the power management settings between 2D or 3D) and never use the monitor to watch photos after the shot. The power management settings are 2D monitor, 3D monitor and 3D monitor combined with quick auto focus. They work only for the time before you press the shutter button. When you press the shutter button the scene is shown in 3D and also the photo you took is shown in 3D afterwards. I found this good. From people displaying photos in 3D on the camera monitor I heart complaints about a short battery live. I cannot confirm this since I always use my computer to display the photos. Charging the battery took me around two and a half hours.
The start-up time was quick enough for me. I measured about three to four seconds.
What I did not like so much was this wheel for the settings on the upper right side. Often I switched to a different setting by accident. The wheel is a great idea but it is too easy to change the settings by accident.
It would have been nice if I could set the internal clock to 24 hours display.
The 3D monitor looks interesting. It measures 3.5 inches (8.89 cm) and has about 1.15 million color dots. But honestly I did not use it to watch anything in 3D. For me it is simply too small. 3D needs display size. There is some flicker at this monitor. But what really annoyed me was that the shown photo gets sharp only after shown for about three, four seconds. So the camera seems to need this time to adjust the output. Because of this my eyes looked first for a while at a not really sharp photo and this was not a nice feeling.
Shooting in 3D is a bit different from 2D. You need a scene that is good for 3D and you always have to keep a certain distance. But here training helps and to learn this was perhaps the most fun for me with this camera. The focus range for 2D macro photos is from 8 cm to 80 cm (0.3 ft to 2.6 ft) and at 3D shooting mode from 38 cm to 70 cm (1.2 ft to 2.3 ft). The by Fujifilm recommended minimum shooting distance for 3D with the normal wide setting is 1.3 m (4.3 ft) and for macro 48 cm (1.6 ft). One thing you will have to learn too is that in 3D you cannot shoot in portrait mode but only in landscape mode. For some scenes this is a real handicap. But this is a general 3D recording problem. On the other hand even at 2D video recording you have this portrait mode problem with every camera - so nothing really new. You will just have to get used to it when taking 3D shots.
You have special shooting modes because of the two lenses. Besides the typical scene modes found in most modern digital cameras like sunset, sports, beach, night (13 in total) the Fujifilm has some unique modes because of its dual lens design. They all work only in 2D. One is Tele/Wide were you can shoot with one lens zoomed and at the same time with the other in normal wide mode. A 2-Sensitivity mode allows you to capture two images at different ISO settings simultaneously and a 2-Color mode allows you to shoot two photos with the color setting F-Standard and F-Chrome (has more vibrant colors) at the same time. Besides these 2 lens modes, settings like interval shooting, face detection (2D only) are also available.
Image storage size at the highest quality settings is not small. The two 10-Megapixel CCD of the REAL 3D W3 create a lot of data. I need about 10 MB for the 3D MPO file and about 5 MB for the additional (optional) 2D JPG file at a 3,648 x 2,736 (4:3) resolution. This is the highest possible resolution. So you will not get very far with the internal memory of about 34 MB. But much data need much space. I have about 8 TB disk space on my computer. So no problem for me. But you can reduce the quality and resolution settings. Many people reported that you do not see much quality loss. And you do not need to save a 2D photo at the same time when you take a 3D photo. With freeware you can extract it afterwards out of the MPO file. At this occasion a hint. You will not see thumbnails for the mpo files for instance in the explorer of Windows 7. At the page Fujifilm & Other Download Links at this site you can find information where you can download a fix for WinXP, Vista and Win7 - use it at your own risk. It worked for me on Win7 32 Bit without any problems. I did not check the other OS.
Video storage size at the highest quality setting HD1280 is about 4 GB for 10 minutes. That is a lot of space. With the firmware version 2.0 you can use an Economy Mode to reduce this size. But in my view the video quality suffers too much then. More information about the needed memory space at different recording settings you can find at specifications that you can download at the page Fujifilm & Other Download Links at this site. There you also find download links to my sample video files.
My Conclusion
In the end Fujifilm decided what I can write here, it was not up to me.
I bought and paid and hoped and prayed and suffered ;-) I just can tell you what I have experienced with these 4 Fujifilm FinePix REAL 3D W3 samples. I really thought that the cameras are broken and did not know that this is the highest possible Fujifilm quality standard. And I am not joking when I write these words. In the end this is what I had to understand and to accept. I am afraid for me 3D will never be the same after this story. I gave up already the idea to buy as next challenge a 3D video camera and a new 3D monitor. But perhaps you are luckier. I expect a certain minimum quality standard but that is for sure not the case for everyone. So this camera might be great or good enough for many people - perhaps just not for me. Let's continue to sum up my experience. But let me explain first why I created this review.
I read many reviews about this camera on the internet before I bought it. But most reviews just checked 2D. Some even gave me the feeling they did not check anything at all and just tried to lure me there for paid clicks. Then I read a lot of customer opinions. Here I thought mostly the ones with bad experience will write - so forget them. But there are many positive fake comments too. You will find them mostly at sites where they try to sell this camera or have Fujifilm advertisement. If you post there something negative it will disappear as soon as detected. The same is true for some forums. There are many sellers who want to promote the camera and do not like not positive comments there. And in such forums there are people who do not like you if you don't admire their toy. So not always an easy world.
This is why in the end I created this extended review site with my experience without any paid advertisement or any other payment - there is only the Weebly ad on this site (Weebly enables this website here for free). I want to share my experience not just with some words but with some more information like photos and videos. In addition I had the (bad) luck to have 4 camera samples in my hands and not only one - so I had more samples to look at. In addition to the experience with my cameras I checked MANY reviews and output samples of this camera type that I could find on the internet before I came to my conclusion. But back to this - my conclusion.
The sold cameras seem to have a wide quality fluctuation. So it is more or less a lucky draw what one might get - at least this was my feeling. The quality control at the production line seems to be weak. What Fujifilm accepts as their quality standard is a wide range. For my taste a bit too wide. On top of it they are not able to fix a camera because they do not have the tools for it and sent me even back a completely useless camera with the status repaired - do they check anything? On top of it they refused to fix a camera and say somehow "that was it for us - leave us alone". On top of it they sent me as final camera a camera with in the end pretty much the same tilt problem - this was the problem that should have been fixed. The sharpness is still a problem too and now it even has bad pixel at video recording. With some (basic) quality control at the production plant these problems should not exist - at least this is what I think. It was not hard to see the problems. It was only hard to ignore them - at least for me.
I see this camera as a camera for people who are willing to accept the Fujifilm quality standards. This was not easy for me and it was a huge effort to get to the point where I am now - even if the result is still very far from perfect. It is even worse. I think now I have the worst camera of all FinePix REAL 3D W3 samples. But they all were not good. Fujifilm had enough opportunity to send me a working camera but as shown here they never did. In this sense - what is the warranty good for?
Because of all the problems I hardly ever use the camera. I got tired of this hit or miss photo quality were the hits are the exception. And here the biggest problem is the sharpness of the lenses. With software and some work you can correct alignment problems (to a certain extend) but not sharpness problems. So I ended up to take shots with the Fujifilm 3D camera and in addition with my 2D camera from the same scene - just to have a good photo for sure. But this two camera approach was annoying and so I ended up to leave the 3D camera more and more often at home. This poor sharpness did not get better in all the months and with all the REAL 3D W3 cameras I had. I think I really tried every possible camera setting and shooting mode but it did not change anything.
I did not write about the software that comes with the camera - for good reason. I got errors from the coding and crashes. The situation was the same on my WinXP and on my Win7/32 because they were internal software problems of this program and so not OS related. I cannot tell you if it works for others. I guess the software has for instance problems with some region settings. This seems to be not programmed correctly. But I did not spend too much time with it and took it from my system. You will have to check it on your system and perhaps it works. Whatever the outcome will be - you do not need this software. There is great freeware on the internet. Just read about the freeware Stereo Photo Maker at the following link 3D Photos without 3D Camera.
I did not care much about the nice 3D monitor of the camera even if it is an interesting experience. But today we have 3D monitors and 3D TVs and 3D needs a bigger display size. And how should you handle many photos of your collection with this camera and this small display? In addition flicker and the sharpness adjustment lag of some seconds for every shown photo were things I did not really like.
If Fujifilm could fix at least the problems in respect of the photo quality it could be a great 3D camera. I don't know why it is so hard to align axes and I do not know why it is so hard to get the correct sharpness with both lenses or to see bad pixel. Why is it so hard to filter out problem cameras with a simple quality control before they go to the market? For instance it just takes 1 shot of a cross to check for alignment problems. A computer could do this. And bad pixel...
If Fujifilm can overcome these problems and could increase their overall quality standard including the one for the service I really would rate it as great idea and a great product without almost any compromise. I really hope they want and can because there are not many 3D camera options on the market.
If you want to get more information about the old FinePix REAL 3D W1 and how it came to the new W3 camera version check out the link below - it is not on my site so expect ads there. Don't forget to click on the link "to dismal reviews" in the text to see the story about the W1 and the response of Fujifilm to the bad reviews:
Fujifilm introduces Finepix Real 3D W3 camera, we go hands-on
Finally & The End of this Review
If something is missing what you would like to know that I did not cover then please use the contact link at this site to let me know it. Or just let me know what you think in general. In the end I created this site for YOU. I will have to live with the camera I got to meet the Fujifilm customer specifications. Sadly there seems to be no other option and I tried very hard to get a camera that meets at least somehow my specifications - just acceptable sharpness, correct alignment and no bad pixel - nothing special I think.
If there is any change to this story I will update my blog at this site. Perhaps Fujifilm brings out a new 3D camera and is brave enough to send it to me for a review :-))
Feel free to add a link to this review site wherever you want. If you want to stay informed about further developments please add the RSS-Feed at my Blog to your browser.
Review Fujifilm FinePix REAL 3D W3 - 02/2012