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As a member of FujiFilm's F-series cameras, the F50fd inherits the family's idiosyncrasies, including the Top 3 or Last 3 burst options. It'll burst a bunch of shots in a row in rapid succession (nearly 2 fps), but locks up at three shots in Top 3 mode. Last 3 meanwhile, keeps machine-gunning away for as long as you want, but only the last 3 shots once you stop squeezing the shutter are actually saved. In either case, the F50fd takes several seconds to unbuffer after a 3-shot capture burst. Long period continuous capture will fire away until the card is full or battery is drained at an unhurried pace of just about 1 frame every 2.3 seconds.
Another of the F50fd's peculiarities includes a "manual" mode, which is described as an "auto mode with several manual overrides." You can control a number of image quality settings in Manual, but Aperture or Shutter speed are not among them. To control Aperture or Shutter, you've got to use A/S mode, and then you can control one or the other, but not both at the same time.
The F50fd has four metering modes; however, only Spot, Average, or Multi are accessible via the "Photometry" menu option. Face Detection mode, which is both a focusing and metering mode, has a dedicated button on the rear of the camera.
There are 14 scene modes and two dial settings for Scene modes, which isn't as weird as it sounds. Both SCN1 and SCN2 bring up the same scene modes, but you can save any of the 14 modes as the default setting for SCN1 and SCN2, which allows you to switch quickly to your favorite mode(s) without having to scroll through the menu each time.
In Auto mode, the camera chooses the settings, including strobe. If you do not want strobe at all, there's a Natural Light option. Not sure if you want the harshness of direct flash or the natural light? Choose Natural & Flash. The F50fd will fire two shots in a row -- the first with no strobe (and a high ISO in low light) and the second with strobe -- and let you choose the best one. It's an interesting work-around, but in some of our tests, we weren't all that pleased with either photo!
Dual IS mode, in all but Manual and A/S mode, both boosts the ISO and activates the sensor-shift mechanism. True, both of these functions can minimize camera shake, but in anything less than broad daylight, the ISO is cranked way up, which diminishes image quality. Fortunately, in Manual and A/S mode, you can select your own ISO or maximum ISO (ISO Auto 400/800/1600).
Movie Mode captures at VGA resolution (640x480 px at 30 fps) with mono sound. You can record at any focal length, although there's no zooming during capture. Image Stabilization can be activated for video capture, although it doesn't appear to be all that effective. There's still a little bit of drift and shake to be seen, with even the slightest movements.
The F-Mode menu contains a Power Management option, which allows for Power Save, Quick Autofocus, or Clear Display. It is interesting to have an option to choose how to make the camera perform, and even when set to Quick AF, the LCD display looks very good during playback (although it is a little noisy in low light capture), and the battery life doesn't seem to suffer too much from either non-power save setting.
Playback mode can remove red-eye if faces were detected during capture. You can also annotate photos with voice notes, crop the photo in-camera for DPOF printing, and sort photos by date of capture. The F-mode button allows for Slideshows, trimming to VGA resolution for online sharing, and irSimple communication with other FujiFilm cameras with irSimple or other irSimple-capable devices.
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