DL PITS Fujifilm's FinePix F100fd against Sony's Cyber-shot W300.

The latter looks set to unseat Fujifilm's uncontested perch on the low-light shooters' throne.

The background of the rivalry began with the FinePix F10 launched in 2006. Its success was in its sensitivity of ISO1600 - unheard of then in a compact.

The F10's 1/1.7-inch image sensor was almost thrice larger than the usual 1/2.7-inch ones, capturing more colour, contrasts and details.

Fast forward to the F50fd, the sixth version in the series which appeared last year. The resolution was doubled from 6 to 12 megapixels.

This year, however, Sony fired its salvo - the 13.6-megapixel Cyber-shot W300. It has a sensor that is almost the size of the F100fd's - Fujifilm's seventh and the latest offering.

Let the fight begin.

Round 1: Look & feel

The W300's titanium skin wins credits for being scratch-resistant,

It's also quieter in zooming and focusing; the F100fd whines a little. On start up, the W300 focuses a blink-of-an-eye faster than its rival.

The optical image stabilisation of the W300 works better too - little surprise as Sony has been at it for years in its videocams.

Winner: Sony

Round 2: Lens

Instead of the ho-hum 36mm of its predecessors, the F100fd starts from a 28mm and zooms to 140mm. It beats the W300's boring 35-105mm hands down. Sony, however, is able to keep the speed of its lens at F2.8 while Fujifilm is forced to make a slower F3.3 lens.

In scenes, where the contrast is extreme, the W300 has worse colour fringing - a false blue fringe on the edges of objects - than the F100fd.

Winner: Fujifilm

Round 3: Memory & battery

Both brands stuck to their own proprietary memory cards instead of the popular and cheap SD card. You'll have to pay $28 for Sony's Memory Stick Duo and $38 for Fujifilm's XD card of the same size. The W300's battery does 300 shots compared to the F100fd's 230 shots.

Winner: Sony

Round 4: Photo tweaks

The F100fd's face detection can track 10 partial and even upside-down faces; the W300's does eight full faces.

Fujifilm dumbed down the F100fd: Shutter speed and the aperture setting can't be changed in the 'manual' setting.

The W300 can be operated almost as a fully manual camera. I like being able to change the aperture and shutter speed within one mode.

Winner: Sony

Round 5: Picture quality

Both performed well in good lighting.

When the light goes down, though, the W300 emerged triumphant. Not only did it cling on to colours longer, but noise was also better controlled. See the pictures above shot at ISO3200.

In tests for low-light performance at lower resolutions, I found no consistent improvement in either brand.

Winner: Sony

Final say

Fujifilm no longer rules the low-light game. Drum roll, please, for the new champ: the Sony Cyber-shot W300.