But let's not lose sight of the fact that the F31fd blows away all its competitors at anything over ISO 200, which is no mean feat….

There have been changes over the F30; the new processor's noise reduction has been tweaked slightly to preserve a little more detail, meaning that all ISO settings are slightly noisier than the F30; ISO 1600 and 3200 visibly so. The default contrast and sharpening also appear to have been turned down a notch (more like half a notch really). Whether any of this is good news or not is more a matter of taste than anything, but for the more serious user (especially those who like to post-process) even the slightest toning down of in-camera processing is welcome.

And so, to sum up; the F31fd is everything the F30 was, with a couple of tweaks here and there that - on balance - can be considered to offer a slight improvement over what was already a uniquely capable camera. I suspect (though I hope I'm wrong) that this is the last time we'll see this sensor in a compact camera, as Fuji feels the pressure to keep up with the megapixel race ever more strongly. This would be a real tragedy; the F31fd hits the image quality 'sweet spot' by using a large sensor, relatively low pixel count and some very clever processing, and I can't see them repeating this with a more densely-packed sensor. It is the perfect illustration of the oft made point that more pixels do not mean better quality; we've compared the F31fd to a whole range of much more expensive compacts going right up to 10MP, and - aside from a little extra resolution at base ISO - it puts most of them to shame. Once you get to ISO 400 there simply isn't a compact on the market that can hold a flame to it.

At this moment in time - this unassuming little 6MP camera still sets the benchmark for image quality in the entire compact sector. It's also a surprisingly reliable 'point and shoot' model with excellent color and accurate focus/metering in most circumstances.