After Neil bought his Sony P-72 last weekend I couldn’t stand the wait any longer and yesterday I blew my paycheck on Fuji’s FinePix 3800. The test drive so far is posted here.
Off the mark this thing is already hurting my soul. I adamantly wanted at least a 6x optical zoom as a trade off for not being able to interchange lenses like an SLR, and it’s got that. I checked its power-up time and that’s adequate at about 2.5 seconds. Cycle time (time it takes to take a pic, then take another pic) isn’t at all impressive at over two seconds. But it’s a light, comfortable, intuitive camera that I imagine would be great for just about anyone vacationing with the fam.
I did not note the utter lack of an auto-focus lamp. Or a manual focus. A fatal combination, let me tell you. In low light (meaning anything indoors or past five in the afternoon, apparently) you’re screwed.
Nevertheless, I’m going to go read the actual instruction manual now, and maybe I’ll be able to say I’m a moron for not doing so sooner. At this point I”d settle for being able to adjust equivalent sensitivity past ISO 100.
o_6 *grumbles off*
Welcome to the digital word mr dj.
I’m interested to hear what you think of it all. Personally I am frustrated with it all unless I wanna shell the $2500 for the Nikon D100 that I’ve been drooling over for the past year almost. Great for clicking temporarily memorable moments with friends and fam and such, but for creativities sake, I’ll take the SLR please.
And I feeeeel your pain over the lack of manual focus.
On the good side, you can at least use it to play with compositions before you waste some film with your SLR.
COMMENT:
d00d, I KNOW! I first started reading about the D100 about two years ago, before it got over here. Back then it was three grand… in POUNDS. Since then there have been enough advances in the tech that I can get a good enough camera for under a grand. I’ll be taking a serious look at the Canon G2 (has manual focus) and I certainly won’t forget to check low-light ability again.
OMG! The Spamdragon! I was looking at the pic, thinking it was interesting to say the least, then…wait a minute…there’s something familiar….I forgot I had even given him to you. How’s that for poor long term memory. Good to see him though, reminded me of my one time blind devotion to you, and made me laugh.
Jonathan, I’m with you. I bought my digital to replace a point and shoot. I can run around going clicky clicky and never worrying about film costs. I have got some good pics with it already, and I have also had a few frustrations finding out I can’t manually set my shutter speed. But when it comes right down to it, I am not trying to replace my SLR. If I find a good shot with the digital, I can reach into my bag, pull out the SLR and make it a great shot. That is not to say I haven’t got some great shots with my Sony. I am quite pleased overall.
Sorry to hear it’s not the one you want, but hey, I think you’ve got bigger pictures in you than that camera can make, so holding onto it would just drive you insane. Expressing your soul through too small a circle…
Hey DJ – yes, it’s your favourite and most sexy chicken in the world! Okay, so, maybe just the Coolsig world. I don’t know how I missed this before, but thanks for being there for me. I really appreciate it. Things have been and are tough, but I can’t say that I’m not going to survive.
I love your blog – it’s amazing!
*hugs*
~~sexychicken~~