[lug] Camera recommendations

[Sean Reifschneider]

Jeffrey Haemer wrote:
> The three he chose I summarize below.  I'd get the Fuji for indoor, the
> Canon
> for outdoor.

I have the previous model of the Fuji, the FinePix F60fd, and I also had
several previous models in that series as well.  I'm pretty happy with it.
It's quite a bit bigger than the previous cameras I had.

I used to have a SLR film camera, but I just never carried it.  I got a
smaller but still large Olympus after that and it was still pretty big and
I didn't carry it much.  Around 2000 I got one of those tiny Casio Exilim
cameras and started carrying it in my pocket all the time.

As Davide says in the other thread, the best camera is the one you're going
to carry.

They had a new upgrade of that Casio that I was looking at, ut the sample
pictures I was looking at were terrible.  I'm not a big quality snob, but
even to me the pictures I thought were just awful.  I then got a Pentax
Optio, then a Panasonic Lumix, before the 3 FinePix.

Note that Fuji has the FinePix F100fd now, but it's had problems with
picture quality.  That may be fixed with a new firmware, but verify that
before you go down that road.

The FinePix is about as big as I'd want to carry in my pocket all the time.
But it does take pretty nice pictures, particularly in low light.  However,
as with every compact camera I've owned, the flash is very weak.  It's good
for around 7 feet from your subject, a bit further in the "night mode".
But in rather low light it does pretty well, because of the CCD.

As far as the F50fd goes, I really wish it had a camera orientation sensor.
If I take a portrait orientation photo, I have to manually rotate the image
rather than my "download from camera" script being able to do it
automatically.  The Olympus had this and I loved it.  The Olympus also had
an IR remote which I really liked.

I also love the Sandisk "plus" SD cards, which break in half and plug
directly into a USB port.  I don't have to carry any cables or dongles to
download my photos.

I'm pretty happy with the Fuji.

Oh, you may be wondering why I've had so many cameras since 2000.  I've
found that upgrading every year or so costs around $100, if I sell the
previous one on ebay.  So, I might as well.

At the last PyCon I played with a friend's Canon SLR and it had a very
powerful flash, and took great pictures, but I'm having a hard time
believing that I'd actually carry it.

Sean
-- 
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability

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