I am/was a die hard 35mm SLR fan, and especially a totally manual one, where all I had was a basic light meter reading and I have to do all the settings manually. I have an old (1970's) Practrica Nova 1B with a terrific 50mm lens and I also had a terrific 70 – 210 telephoto with a macro lens, that was my main lens. I also had an portable, multi-adjustable flash attachment that you don't see on any cameras nowadays that totally eliminated shadows and red-eyes in my pictures. What I'm trying to say is that I knew (know) how to take pictures without all the all the special electronic widgets and gadgets, and without the needs for batteries, except for my flash.
The only reason I am attracted to digital is that my old film camera has developed shutter problems, and getting it fixed by someone that knows what they are doing, and getting parts, is next to impossible. My daughter gave me a couple of SLR cameras, but they are semi-automatic and automatic and I never really got used to them. The other reason I'm attracted to digital is that I don't have to carry film, and that I can take a bunch of pictures and keep only what I want. The trouble I found is getting a good picture the way I want it, and not the way the camera software/hadrware geek thinks I want it.
While I have a point and shoot digital camera, I've been searching for one that has a longer telephoto lens, and one that also has some the ability for manual settings for zoom, focus, aperture and shutter speed. I'd like to get a DSLR but that costs money and then I also have to deal with new lenses, as they make sure that any old one (that are perfectly good) won't fit.
I had been trying to get an older FujiFilm Finepix 6000 model with 6.3MP and a 10x zoom that also had a manual zoom and focus settings, but that deal didn't work out. What I eventually found was a newer s1770 model (not even a year old) that has basically everything I'm looking for except the manual zoom and focus, that I figure I can live without. This model has 12.2 MP and a 15x zoom plus a 6x digital zoom, (for a total of 95x zoom) that will give me a lot of flexibility. It also has a macro setting as well as the ability to take HD movies. It also has a host of other features. This camera is basically a poor man's DSLR and the nice thing is that it's relatively small and I don't need to carry around my lenses. More Photos…
I got it on Kijiji, from a university student in Waterloo that was looking to sell it as he just bought a pocket, point and shoot camera. It came with a charger, 4 rechargeable batteries, a 4GB SDHC card, lens cap, strap, camera bag, and software disc. I got it all for $130.00, which is way less than half price, as I was checking out, The Source, and Wallmart, and they were offering the the S1700 (bare bones) on sale for $189.00 plus taxes. Now that I got it, I got to learn how to use it…
Saysame (Says-a-me) 