| Author | Message | ||
     Reepicheep |
After more then 15,000 shots on my Coolpix 950, somebody finally built the camera I said I would buy if they built it. I have loved the Cannon Digital rebel for a long time, mainly because it can do serious low light work. Unfortunately the price and size put it out of my reach, even if I could justify a $1000 photography setup, I would then be hesitant to carry it around, and the size of an SLR setup generally starts to make trips more about the pictures then the experience I am trying to document... which kind of defeats the purpose. Anyway, what I wanted was a pretty narrow application in a small form factor. I wanted a digital equivalent of an old Leica... always there, incredibly non invasive, highly tuned for a particular task. Something that does not try to do everything in the interest of doing what I really want exceptionally well. I could buy a digital rebel and go from a 20 mm wide angle to a 600mm telescope... which is awesome... but I can't afford either of those lenses, and would be terrified to carry them around with me if I could afford them... So in searching for a point and shoot for my wife, and discovering that all the cheap ones were crappy, I looked at the "next tier" and stumbled on one that not only works for her, but had what I wanted. It is the Fuji F-10... which is ironic... I had previously dismissed Fuji as having some of the *worst* low light performance in the industry. It is tiny enough to keep in a pants pocket comfortably, has an F2.8 wide angle (same as a traditional SLR 36-108mm zoom), and most importantly can shoot and operate well at full (6.3 MP) resolution at 1600 ASA. It gets some noise at that exposure, but far less then any 1600 speed film (color or even T-Max) that I have ever used. And the noise is not disruptive, it has a warm feel to it. It has a clamshell lens cover to make it "toss in the tank bag" safe. It can also shoot close to 500 shots on a single battery charge, goes from powered off to captured shot in 1.3 seconds, has a mode where it can do the whole focus - expose - capture in like .2 seconds or less, and if you pre-focus / pre-expose and lock, it will then take the picture in 1/100th of a second. I got it for $329 at a brick and motor store, and got a 1 gig XD card for another $59. More then I wanted to spend, but I was thrilled to get a camera that does so much. The only problem I have seen so far is the close up flash exposure... it butchers it and bakes the heck out of your subject, the pictures are unusable. That being said, flash is not what this camera is about, it is built to be a tool for working with natural light. I'll put up some sample shots soon. | ||
| Jackbequick |
Sounds like a nice little camera. I'll have to look at those the next time I'm in Best Buy. Although my Rebel 300D is not going anywhere. On the flash, my last digital camera (Sony DSC D700) did that on closeups too. I used a small square snipped from a white 3x5 card over the flash to mute the output for closeups. I used a piece of Scotch tape to hold it in place and had it so it could be flipped up out of the way if I backed off. Jack |
