New Camera - Fuji Finepix S9600

Hurrah! Got my new camera, had a look at the big bad boys (£400-600 starting packs) and they were either too heavy/cumbersome or were missing things that are rather important to me (like *forcing* one to shoot through the view finder, which makes working from interesting angles a rather hit-and-miss, or uncomfortable affair), and, frankly, they are just stupidly expensive for not *that* much of an improvement (imho) considering everything else you need to carry to equal the convenience...

This camera was £279, has a very decent spec - 9 megapixel, 10.7x optical zoom (on a 28-300mm lens which can focus in "super macro" mode to 1*cm* thanks to the revolutionary CCD) plus a digital zoom I'm never going to use, runs off 4xAA cells (hurrah again! This is going to be a *must* have for every single camera I own in the future, hate having to drag the chargers around the world), it can take any combination of XD, compact flash or IBM microdrive (yes, it can carry a mini hard disk!), blah blah blah...oh and the LCD display tilts up and down (like a camcorder, see the pic below) so you can easily shoot over the heads in a crowd (useful for Bug Jam!) or at something right on the floor without putting your head in the mud...

Anyway, enough of all that nonsense, here are some of the pics I took today!



Oh and two *amazing* ones, this one, I shot at full zoom, out the left hand window of the car (us travelling at 30mph (left to right), oncoming traffic at about 70mph) in "anti-shake" mode (never had one of them before!) -

- Now, check out these, taken one second apart (see the black car in the distance) -

- one quick twist of the zoom, and was able to snap this(!) incredible!

- (Flyingpops said "you could be a spy with that camera", she's not wrong!)...anyway, that's just a few shots from the day today, lots of new features to play with, lots to learn, but not bad for my first days play...very happy with it, and feel like I have saved myself a fortune... ;)


Now I have to seriously rest my knee, hobbled as little as possible, but it's still killing me... :(

Just had a quick look, and the (f)ailing Mavica served me faithfully (until the C13's started coming) for just over 8000 shots (during it's time with me - a year and a half, meaning about 15 shots per day over that period)...not sure if that's good or not, really (to virtual camera death), but it *is* still going (just) as long as I use original Sony media...

Oh and thanks to Flyingpops for her (occasional bursts of) patience while I have been making my mind up, and to Vodqueen (she knows why... ;)