It's about faces for Fujifilm's FinePix S series
It's about faces for Fujifilm's FinePix S series
The camera's face-detection chip isolates as many as 10 faces in a scene, then passes the info to the Real Photo processing engine, which optimizes focus and exposure for them. Fujifilm claims that its hardware implementation--other manufacturers are developing software versions--makes the feature very fast, so that there's little lag imposed on shooting speed. I'll reserve judgment on both performance and efficacy, since a tool of this sort is highly dependent upon implementation. For instance, the camera will automatically choose one face as being most important; if it frequently guesses wrong, then it may not be terribly useful.
Other RP technologies in the S6000fd include iFlash, which automatically adjusts flash intensity based on the scene--a feature that every digital camera should have--and the poorly dubbed Picture Stabilization, which does nothing more than adjust the Program AE to use a higher set of ISO and shutter-speed settings. In this model, Fujifilm pushes its SuperCCD HR as high as ISO 3,200. Finally, the camera's Dual-Shot mode will snap two photos in succession: one with flash, the other at a higher ISO and shutter speed but without the flash. Basically, it sounds as if the S6000fd gives you a lot of ways to trade off between blur and noise. In my opinion, if you're that conscious of the two, you're better off with a dSLR. But maybe the $500 S6000 will prove me wrong when it ships in September. Check back to find out.