Colour Camera
[phpbay]Colour Camera, 100, 14948, “”[/phpbay]
This is a good digital camera for a starter, or someone who just wants to get the feel of digital photography. The basic functions are all there, it’s easy to operate and it’s light to carry. I’d suggest perhaps buying a higher MB memory card though.
The camera has only 1.3 mega pixels but the picture quality seems pretty good.
In the box, there’s the camera (duh), a USB cable for downloading images, the relevant software, an 8 MG Smart Media memory card and batteries. There’s also a manual.
The camera is pretty basic: A plastic body, colour LCD screen, a navigation button on the back along with a menu and display on/off button. On the front, there’s a switch to change between landscape focus and close-up and the lens cover closes automatically when you switch off. It’s all fairly basic and easy to understand.
It’s not an auto focus camera, so there’s no need to hold the shutter button down to allow it to focus. This means you can simply just point it, click the button, and the job’s done. Couldn’t be simpler.
It’s a 1.3 mega-pixel and fixed lens camera with 1.6 inch LCD monitor and flash with “Advanced Fuji Technology” which, according to Fuji, produces a more realistic picture with finer colour resolution.
FinePix A101 has an automatic flash feature and the quality modes are Fine-Normal-Basic at 1280×960 resolution, and Normal at 640×480. It can focus from 2.6 ft to infinity.
The flash recharging time is quite fast. The pictures can be reviewed and kept or deleted on the camera. However, to use that function you’ll need to view them on the LCD, and that will put a heavy strain on the batteries.
The camera can shoot video at 320×240 pixels and 10 frames per second. However, as you would expect, this uses a lot of memory and it doesn’t record sound.
Using the camera’s button is easy. There are four directional buttons for menu navigation, Menu/OK button and Back button. There is also a Display button to turn on/off the LCD. It’s best to keep the LCD off whenever possible to save battery use.
The transfer to PC via USB cable is pretty fast – less than a minute for the whole 8MB card. You can squeeze up to 80 pictures on the SmartMedia memory card – depending on the resolution.
However…
The camera uses batteries as fast as you can load them, so it’s a good idea to use rechargeables. Also, the screen is unprotected – therefore easily scratched.
When trying to use the video facility, I found I needed really good lighting. Otherwise, everything remains pretty dark, and if you’re not familiar with video editing software (like me), then good luck. It’s not a feature I’ve really made much use of.
The ‘red eye reduction’ feature on the flash isn’t up to much, you still get a bit of ‘red eye’. This can be fixed when editing of course, but why have it in the first place
The camera isn’t all that sturdy. It feels a little flimsy and I wouldn’t recommend bouncing it off a pavement (that goes for most, if not all, cameras).
The Software
There are programs for transferring and viewing the images, simple editing, a driver for the USB connection and software to print photos.
Fuji recommend that the camera is powered with power adapter instead of the batteries during the file transfer, just to make sure the batteries will not die in the middle of the transfer (common sense really).
In conclusion, I’d say this was a good choice of digital camera for a beginner. If you’re intent on winning awards with your pictiographicallogical (?) studies – look somewhere else. If on the other hand you’re like me (a photographic imbecile) – and in the market for an inexpensive, simple digicam, this’ll do nicely.
[phpbay]Colour Camera, 100, 14948, “”[/phpbay]
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