Windows is not a virus! Viruses do something!
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I Need a New CameraDecember 6, 2006 - 9:00pm
When I was in high school I did the journalism thing and a part of that was taking photos, many of which were sports photos. So I was the little geek out on the football field pissing off the players and coach with my insanely large lens and 1600-speed film trying to get all the fun shots. Of course, I did, so they left me alone. After I left I began to really get upset that the cameras I was using weren’t suited for low-light conditions, such as indoors. Having used 1600/3200-speed film I know that they’re rather grainy and wouldn’t make good general-use films anyway. In fact, 3200 was pretty much useless for anything but black-and-white that you didn’t plan on enlarging. You could get away with color at 1600, but don’t expect much out of it. So when I got a digital camera a few years ago I presumed they would have thought of this and made it smarter about low light. Yeah, no. It has pitiful low-light performance. In the sun, it’s phenomenal and takes some really nice pictures with good lighting However, indoors it’s rather sad. Bad contrast, necessity of a flash for anything to even show up, and grainy shots really make it a generic point-and-shoot indoors. I dislike that. I want a camera that can actually handle low light smartly. I’ll grant my camera is about five years old now, and in granting that follow immediately with: I know I need a new camera. Which? A friend pointed me to the Fujifilm FinePix F30, which looks like a phenomenal camera for what I’m looking at. Low light shooting is a central feature, and a lot of the features look to support it well. It’s cheap enough ($250-300 if you look) and pocketable to boot. The same fellow makes an argument that I’ve had for a while and that is: why get a DSLR? Sure, it would be very nice to have a camera with complete control over the picture, and if that was my job (again) I’d do it in a heartbeat. However, I’m just taking pictures for myself and any camera that can get an even amount of light to the sensor should do me fine. I’m all about having the choice of a manual focus or aperture or shutter speed, but that’s something I’d rarely use, even though I know how. Generally, I want the image, not art. So, for me, I think a simple, standard camera is best. Those shots I linked to above, and the rest in my Flickr stream, were taken with that same camera as well — it happens to also be another Fugi, and quite capable of capturing some astonishing moments as well. So, does anyone have that F30? “I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.” — The Victorian Age in Literature – G. K. Chesterton  |
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Not a F30, but a rather oldish E550 which, on a whim, I picked up on vacation in England. Takes gorgeous pictures. Never regretted it.
You should be able to find a decent reseller who agrees to try it for a weekend, at least we have those over here.
My experiences with Fujis are very pleasant, they tend to suck in great colors, I don’t have much trouble with indoor shots, even though it only does a max of ISO 800. Of course, there’s room to improve, but it seems they have done just that, even in their E-Series.
I could pick out some shots, if you like. Contact me by mail if you’re interested.
cheers,
-k
Looks like that’s a popular camera. Flickr has a lot of shots from that one to look at and the specifications are remarkably similar to the F30, too.
Looks like Fugi’s the current king of the digital PAS camera for image quality and versatility. That narrows down the search, certainly. :D
So, any problems with the pictures on that model?
Nothing unexpected. It has problems with very bright lightsources but nothing you couldn’t correct later on. For example I took one shot after a heavy thunderstorm, with the setting sun just leaping out under pitch-black clouds. Got me some artifacts, but for a $250 model it’s great :)
The only thing which annoys the hell out of me is the limited shutter time. Mine has a maximum of 3 secs, but I’ve seen the F30 does a lot more than that. That’s the reason mine is only of limited use for nighttime pictures without artificial light of some sort (say outback conditions).
Update: This is a good representative of the problem. Nice picture, but the limits of the camera show.
I’d go with a Fuji again, that’s for sure. Especially the vivid colors they produce are just what I want. Not much fiddling required, which is especially cool for snapshots where you don’t have much time to change settings – just pop it into automatic and shoot. Plus, it’s got a very good “boot time”, which was the primary reason I picked it up.
One downside are the XD cards it requires, they are way more expensive than SD or any of the other formats, but then again, how many do you really need? I have around 4GB worth of cards and that brought me through four weeks across Australia with no laptop and no internet.
And another nice thing: mine takes regular (photo) batteries, which you can pick almost everywhere. Throw in the filter adaptor for your choice of polarization and/or grey filters and you should be all set for under 400 bucks.
I’ve been running on a 3MP camera and a 1GB card for a while now and haven’t run out of space yet. I can’t imagine JPEG files more than double in size between the two resolutions, so I think a 1GB would suit me fine for now.
I think that F30’s going to be it. The only problem now is finding the money. Buy Notae! ;)
Thanks for the great info; that helped a lot.