Hmmm regarding my Canon 350D,
I had to cancel the cheque I sent to the seller as he says he hasn't
received it - despite the Royal Mail track and trace facilities saying it
was delivered and signed for). In telephone conversations, he said he gave
me the wrong post code - the address he emailed me on eekbay was his company
address but the post code is for his home address. The cheque is now stopped
and marked as 'stolen' by the bank - so shouldn't be any problems there I
hope. There hasn't been sufficient time for any transfer of funds and as an
added precaution, the funds haven't been put in the bank yet!
But I've decided I'm not taking chances like that again - will buy a digital
camera from a bona fide shop like Jessop's, or Curry's. At the moment I'm
not in a mood for doing any more saving up so I'm tempted to go out and just
buy a SLR lookalike such as the Fujifilm Finepix S6500fd Zoom (Digital
Camera), but I know if I did I'd probably regret it later - no matter how
good a fixed lens the digital camera has. The lens on the S6500fd is equiv.
to an SLRs 28-300mm - which is wide-angle, through normal, to reasonable
telephoto and would ensure no dust gets in the camera to block pixels. It's
6.3 MegaPixel resolution is adequate for serious photography work and it's
macro facility lets you get as close as 100mm to the subject (about 4 inches
away) and so is comparable to the macro facilities of my film SLRs. The
camera has 10.7x 'optical' zoom - which is nice :)
There are three obvious 'cons' to it:
An electronic viewfinder rather than a SLR optical viewfinder.
Fixed lens (even if a good one).
The rather diminutive size of the camera - it fits in one hand I think.
The 'pros' for it are:
It is brand new and affordable - with full warranties.
It has Fuji quality (and Fuji are good, if underated camera manufacturers
with a long and proud history in photography)
The fixed lens is equiv. to 28-300mm and Fujica are renowned for the quality
of their lenses. The fixed lens prevents dust etc. getting into the camera.
It can take filters!
It has a manual focusing mode, which coupled with its manual exposure mode
means it should feel like using a real SLR - and give similar creative
control.
It has a 'face' recognition software that can identify and recognise two
eyes and lips as belonging to faces and will automatically ensure that any
'faces' it sees are properly focussed and exposed - noyt always what the
photographer wants (e.g. when shooting silhouettes, say) and I'm not sure
how well it work even when that is what is desired.
The controls and menus seem reasonably simple to use - and I've used my
friend's Fuji S3500 so I'll probably feel right at home with the camera
straight off.
It 'looks' like a tiny DSLR - most people who are the none wiser would think
it was a small DLSR - purely on looks. Photography wise, it is well capable
of the main role what I want a DSLR for - 'instant' portraiture - but it is
important that customers accept the camera as being suitable. That's the
biggest issue.
Allan (who is still wondering what's the best course of action)
PS No trees were harmed in the sending of this message and a very large
number of electrons were asked their permission to be terribly
inconvenienced. (And threw a party for them afterwards for being really cool
about it).
Disrupting the unnatural balance that you, as a conscious human being and a
confused mass of energy, have created.
-Disturb the mind -
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