Daftness With The New DigiCam, on Dispatch from the Razor's Edge

Plus Two Short Films By Emma Fuchs

The Weather Forecast (realmedia, 722kb)

The Acceptance Speech (realmedia, 1678kb)

After limping back from the hinterland with my car's engine temperature gauge reading "Emergency, Eject" – just in time to spend my Mom's birthday with her, for the first time in, oh, about a dozen years – I finally took receipt of my Fujifilm FinePix 2800Zoom. Remarkably, I spent more time researching this purchase (by, like x4) than I did on my first digital camera. Final selling points (for me) on the FinePix:

Image quality, image quality, image quality. At the end of the day, this is what matters. And the FinePix has, I do believe, the third best image quality of any mid-range consumer camera (behind the Canon S-series, and the Olympus Camedia D-series). Gorgeous shots, very consistently.
6x Zoom. When you start looking for greater than 3x, you narrow the candidate pool immensely. However, when shooting wildlife (which I'm going to be in, like, Serengeti National Park), zoom counts. It's just too hard to get close to the furry buggers.
Form factor. This is a compact, though not "ultra-compact," model. But it is just about the smallest camera with this much zoom. Also, it happens to be shaped like a camera – with a sturdy right hand grip, a lens housing you can get your left hand under, and an electronic viewfinder you can stick your eye up to. This gives you a very good SLR-style grip on the thing, for steady shooting.
Eats the right kind of things (for me). Memory is SmartMedia, which my laptop also reads natively. And power is AAs, which I just happened to buy two sets of NiMH rechargeables, with a compact rapid recharger. (Also, AAs beat proprietary lithium ion batteries, when you're in the Okavango Delta without a power outlet, and you go dead. I can slap in some spare alkalines and still be in business.)

But, as always with these things, compromise is the watchword – no camera has everything: The FinePix is only 2-megapixels (vs. the 3 or 4 in vogue these days). However, 2 is way more than you need for the web – and you can print perfectly adequate 8x10s, so I finally didn't know why I really needed more resolution. Also, the FinePix has extremely limited manual controls. But, I'm not really to the point of being very technical yet; I just like to point and shoot (and then do any cleaning up later in Photoshop). Anyway, after this process, I now know more about [mid-range consumer] digital cameras than God. So, if you're on the market, please feel free to pick my addled brain. (hide)

video photography emma

Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very long walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.


2023 >> 2022 >> 2021 >> 2020 >> 2019 >> 2018 >> 2017 >> 2016 >> 2015 >> 2014 >> 2013 >> 2012 >> 2011 >> 2010 >> 2009 >> 2008 >> 2007 >> 2006 >> 2005 >> 2004 >> 2003 >> 2002-12-20 2002-12-18 2002-12-17 2002-12-16 2002-12-15 2002-12-13 2002-12-12 2002-12-10 2002-12-06 2002-12-03 2002-11-28 2002-11-26 2002-11-24 2002-11-21 2002-11-20 2002-11-19 2002-11-16 2002-11-14 2002-11-12 2002-11-08 2002-11-07 2002-11-04 2002-11-02 2002-11-01 2002-10-31 2002-10-30 2002-10-28 2002-10-26 2002-10-24 2002-10-03 2002-10-02 2002-09-21 2002-09-18 2002-09-15 2002-09-11 2002-08-26 2002-08-20 2002-08-15 2002-08-07 2002-08-01 2002-07-27 2002-07-22 2002-07-20 2002-07-17 2002-07-14 2002-07-13 2002-07-11 2002-07-09 2002-07-06 2002-07-04	2002.09.21 : Daftness With The New DigiCam Plus Two Short Films By Emma Fuchs The Weather Forecast (realmedia, 722kb) The Acceptance Speech (realmedia, 1678kb) After limping back from the hinterland with my car's engine temperature gauge reading "Emergency, Eject" – just in time to spend my Mom's birthday with her, for the first time in, oh, about a dozen years – I finally took receipt of my Fujifilm FinePix 2800Zoom. Remarkably, I spent more time researching this purchase (by, like x4) than I did on my first digital camera. Final selling points (for me) on the FinePix: Image quality, image quality, image quality. At the end of the day, this is what matters. And the FinePix has, I do believe, the third best image quality of any mid-range consumer camera (behind the Canon S-series, and the Olympus Camedia D-series). Gorgeous shots, very consistently. 6x Zoom. When you start looking for greater than 3x, you narrow the candidate pool immensely. However, when shooting wildlife (which I'm going to be in, like, Serengeti National Park), zoom counts. It's just too hard to get close to the furry buggers. Form factor. This is a compact, though not "ultra-compact," model. But it is just about the smallest camera with this much zoom. Also, it happens to be shaped like a camera – with a sturdy right hand grip, a lens housing you can get your left hand under, and an electronic viewfinder you can stick your eye up to. This gives you a very good SLR-style grip on the thing, for steady shooting. Eats the right kind of things (for me). Memory is SmartMedia, which my laptop also reads natively. And power is AAs, which I just happened to buy two sets of NiMH rechargeables, with a compact rapid recharger. (Also, AAs beat proprietary lithium ion batteries, when you're in the Okavango Delta without a power outlet, and you go dead. I can slap in some spare alkalines and still be in business.) But, as always with these things, compromise is the watchword – no camera has everything: The FinePix is only 2-megapixels (vs. the 3 or 4 in vogue these days). However, 2 is way more than you need for the web – and you can print perfectly adequate 8x10s, so I finally didn't know why I really needed more resolution. Also, the FinePix has extremely limited manual controls. But, I'm not really to the point of being very technical yet; I just like to point and shoot (and then do any cleaning up later in Photoshop). Anyway, after this process, I now know more about [mid-range consumer] digital cameras than God. So, if you're on the market, please feel free to pick my addled brain. (hide) Tweet video photography emma ← before \| contribute comment ↓ \| after →