I had been waiting a long time for a superzoom pocket camera with RAW format to come on the market. In 2010, Casio released their RAW-capable FH100, but none were available locally and the RAW write times were too long to be anything but annoying, so when Fuji released their F550 EXR, also RAW-capable and with reasonable RAW write times and was available locally, I thought my pocket camera had arrived!

That was until I saw its shots had horrid lens flaring around bright point source lights, such as the local streetlights in night shots and direct shots of the sun at sunrise and sunset. This flaring was almost a deal-breaker, but the camera has so many other outstanding attributes I decided to live with that one issue and just avoid using it in situations where it would be a problem.

On the other hand, I've read many reports of this model having decentered lenses, which causes side and/or corner blurring, but that’s something I haven't seen in mine. There are also many complaints about the video in low light being unusable and that I can agree with. Fortunately, I have no interest in shooting video, so to this point the flaws in my F550 haven’t outweighed its good points.