Why Another Photography Blog?

Let's get this out there from the start.  I don't like blogging.  I'm a lousy writer and I don't have enough patience to maintain blogs.  I do however have wide interests and indulge in a lot of 'stuff'.  I write my blogs mostly so that I can remember things like how I solved a particular problem or how I learned to do something I might want to do again at some far off date.

One thing I have always done is take photos.  I started with my first 'Brownie Box Camera' using 620 film.  I still have one, and oddly enough found some film that has never been used in my office drawer last week.

I went through the Polaroid Land Camera phase and even had an expensive 35mm camera for a while, but once the little pocket 'Instamatic' was released by Kodak, I had a camera I could take with me on my travels.  The silly thing is that I just didn't seem to keep photos much, or take many.  I just liked having a camera because everyone seemed to.

My last 35mm camera was a Minolta SLR, which I still have.



Some time in the 1990s in my computer business I had the chance to add digital cameras to my line of hardware.  I bought one to try out and showed it to a customer.  He immediately saw the value of being able to take a photo of the identification number on his products and store it on a photo along with the information about the customer who bought that equipment.

That was my first digital camera sale.
At the time I felt the images were just too grainy and focus was awful.  Things have changed.

I still used film until 2001, then I got a slightly better digital camera and started taking it with me on my yacht.

Now, I am not stingy with people, but when it comes to spending money on myself I am tighter than a fish's rear end.  I like stuff that works, but I don't look for 'the best' or the most expensive.  I look for the most affordable thing that will give me a practical result.  And I buy on sale.

For anything I will be taking aboard a yacht and carrying ashore in a dinghy it needs to be good and it needs to be cheap enough to lose.

That limits my choice in digital cameras.  After my first digital camera (a Hewlett Packard) I had a wonderful little Kodak that had great zoom, the best Image Stabilisation and a brilliant lens.  Sadly the Fuji lens simply does not compare.  The resolution of the Kodak back then was a little primitive, but the pictures were stunning.

When I dropped it in in flood waters in 2008 I discovered I could not get anything even close.  I pulled it apart and dried it and kept it orking for quite a while but eventually it died and I had to replace it.

Kodak was not available, so I saw a Fuji Finepix s1500 on special for about AUD$150 and bought it.  I have had that camera ever since and recently ity developed some glitches, probably from being exposed to salt for 8 years or so.

For pocket use I buy 5x Optical pocket cameras - usually Samsung, for about $65.  A while ago I went swimming with one in my pocket and could not get a Samsung anywhere, so I replaced it with a Nikon A10 for $68 (on special form $110).

Recently I saw the Fuji Finepix s8600 advertised for about the same price that the s1500 had been, so it has now been added to my collection.

And now we come to the real reason for this blog.  For years I have used the s1500 as a point and shoot camera, basically leaving it on Auto or SP-Auto.

Recently I wanted to explore settings because the colours always seemed washed out.  And with my s8600 offering Optical Zoom of 36x and Digital Zoom taking that to 72x I am noticing the difficulty in focusing.

At first I thought it was simply because thge s8600 doesn't have a viewfinder, and trying to see if a scene is focusing in an LCD screen outside in sunlight is impossible.  Then I realised that the colours were still washed out and flat.

So recently I began exploring the semi manual settings.  And discovered there is not much information for beginners in these Fuji cameras.

I will not be getting into deep and meaningful technical stuff on Aperture, ISO and F-Stop.  What I am doing is for myself.  I will post some pictures of the same scene with some different settings so that I can refer to them and remind myself what works best for me in average situations.


Just a quick note on a few of the pros and cons of  DSLR vs Digital Compact Superzoom.

With current technology the DSLR will always provide a far nicer photo.  The Superzoom cameras have a very tiny image sensor compared to the DSLR and often the Superzooms use the older technology.

One Superzoom however can zoom in over a distance that would need half a dozen lenses on a DSLR.  I regularly take photos zoomed in across 10 miles of water while I am learning abotu my Fuji s8600.  There will be a few of those photos showing wide angle, 36x Optical zoom and 72x Digital zoom in the blog.

A DSLR almost always has a separate viewfinder.  Most modern Superzooms do not.  This is a serious disadvantage.  Trying to frame and focus in sunlight using even a good quality LED screen is a painful way to take photos - especially of you don;t have great eyesight.

Some Superzooms are slow to focus and slow to take each photo, although this can be partly overcome by using the burst mode, where one press of the shutter takes several continuous shots.

There are very few Superzooms that allow manual focus, and the Superzooms have a very limited range of Aperture selections.  DSLR cameras don't suffer this disadvantage.

Carrying a range of very expensive lenses for  a DSLR camera to cover all the possible photo opportunities can be annoying and inconvenient especially if you are travelling in a remote area.  For that reason a lot of professional photographers say they also carry:
A Compact Digital Superzoom
A Digital Pocket Camera
An iPhone

There are a lot more Pros and Cons, but those are a few of the things I considered before looking at my biggest consideration - Cost!

If anyone else has one of the cheaper model Finepix 'sXXXX' series and finds the stuff useful - then great.  And comments will be welcome.  Remember though this is planned to be just a quick start for beginners and some useful tips, like how to get over the problem of the lens caps falling off the Fiji Finepix models.