My Photography Equipment

#3 FujiFilm FinePix S100fs

2008—2010 About 50,000 images taken with this camera (and counting)

My old Z3 (see below) was starting to fall apart and I wanted something with a bit more than its 4MPix. I was looking at the DSLR's around at the time but "live view" was still more of a gimmick. I decided to go with the S100fs, even though the reviews that were starting to come out showed it had a pretty bad lens with regard to distortion and chromatic aberrations (where high-contrast areas are fringed with purple). As usual macro ability was poorly reported and it was only after I bought it that I realized its "1cm super macro" was only at its widest angle (28mm equivalent).

I was also wary of proprietary batteries as they are expensive to replace. Unfortunately very few cameras these days support standard (AA) batteries. I was not prepared to pay $80 for a spare battery (four rechargeable AA batteries cost $20) and had to live with low batteries on a few trips and once the batteries went flat while I was out in the field so I missed opportunities to photograph some rare dragonflies.

Another annoying aspect about this Fuji is its continuous shooting and bracketing modes are annoying. Sure you can take some photos reasonably rapidly (about 3FPS) but you have to wait 5 seconds for them to save. With my old Minolta Z3 you could start shooting as soon as it made a bit of room meaning I could take a burst and if the action was still happening I could take another burst a second later. Not with the S100fs — I would take a series of an animal in action, hoping I got some good shots, but then while I'm waiting several seconds something else happens that I just can't get because of the stupid camera.

In the end I enjoyed the versatility of the camera but would have much preferred better image quality.

Positives	Negatives
Good 11MPix "Super CCD" sensor (useable at ISO200)	Terrible chromatic abberations and bad at pure red colors
Good anti-shake	Proprietary batteries
RAW filee option	Inadequate macro
SD/SDHC cards	Slow saving/continous shooting

#2 Konica-Minolta DiMage Z3

2004—2008 >130,000 photos taken with this camera

I was in a bit of a rush to get another camera, after damaging my first one, and settled on a Z3. I was tossing up between this and a Panasonic with a similar feature set but chose the Konica-Minolta because it used standard AA batteries (for which I had two sets of NiMH rechargables). Its still only a 4M pixel camera and a few months later they released the 6M pixel Z6 which I just missed out on.

Positives	Negatives
Good zoom (12×; 420mm equiv)	Poor image quality on anything other than base ISO50 (terrible noise on ISO200, even worse at 400)
Fast startup and zoom	Terrible low-light performance (slow focus seek, wrong auto WB, noisy images, etc)
Fast focus in good light	Hopeless flash, useful to only 2m unzoomed, 1m when zoomed
Good macro (to 1cm; about 1:1)	Poor build (always had intermittent problems but its starting to fall apart now too)
Standard AA batteries

#1 Olympus C-3040Z

2001—2004 About 20,000 images taken with this camera

My first camera was also a digital camera, an Olympus C3040Z. I had always enjoyed photography but film-based photography was (and still is) too expensive. I bought it back in September 2001 and it cost me a pretty penny, more than entry level DSLR cameras with lenses cost these days. It only has a 3M pixel sensor, which isn't too bad for most purposes but very low by today's standards.

I damaged this camera late 2004 while descending from a tree, resulting in problems with the lens being stuck. Later I managed to get it to work most of the time but I can't use the zoom any more as this will cause the lens internally to dosmount somewhere and then it can't be shut down any more.

Positives	Negatives
Reasonable image quality	Slow to startup
Good flash	Slow zoom and focus
Standard AA batteries	Inadequate macro (minimum 20cm)

Next Camera?

2010?—

I'm going to buy a new camera late this winter with primary focus on image quality. I'm leaning towards the Canon 500D but waiting to see if Nikon come out with anything better in the near future. A flip-out screen (for photographing such things as fungus close to the ground) would be handy.