Bye Canon A70, welcome Fujifilm S6500fd

After serving me faithfully since April 2004, my trusty CanonPowershot A70 had finally fallen under the the pressure of the times around this time last year, leaving me with no camera to take my new pictures in... Ever since then, it had taken lots of memories as well as fantastic pictures because of it's renowned Canon reputation behind it. One year ago, the CCD (Charged Coupled Device, the sensor of the camera) had failed to work as it should, showing a blank screen every time i tried to revive it. I had came to a conclusion that the camera had died on me.

my trusty old camera...

Since then, I had used various ways to take my pictures and memories. The most used way is to use my camera-phone to take my various pictures. One way or another, they had always let me down with their quality. The camera that came with my old PDA phone O2 XDA Mini S was horrible in terms of quality, and I had rarely used it. Later, I sold off my XDA, and got myself a simpler, but more fitting to my style kind of phone, the K750i (Red Edition). The picture quality was very nice for a phone camera, and rivals many cheap digital cameras in terms of clarity, resolution and most important of all, quality as you can see from the newer pictures posted in this blog.

Then again, the quality of k750i is still not enough to be considered for proper photography. Last week (after a almost-daily chat with Jen), I decided to finally plunge in and get myself a brand new camera, so that I can take better pictures when I go traveling to Italy after the end of this semester. All along this while, I had been stalking the popular Canon camera of Powershot S3-IS. The long zoom range, coupled with the anti-shake capability will complement well with my shooting style, as my hands tend to be shaky resulting in lots of blurry pictures with A70. The price had been a hindering factor though. The last time I checked, it costs over RM 1600 with very limited availability in Malaysia due to the impending launch of the successor model Powershot S5-IS. It was launched last week, and the prices turned out to be in the 480+ Euro range. If I am going to buy a S5-IS, I might as well splash out another 100+ Euro and get myself a Digital SLR-type camera instead.

So I looked around DPreview, and had found a very favorable review about the camera Fujifilm S6000fd (model number S6500fd in the Europe region). It's heavy enough to prevent my shaking hands from having too much effect on the sharpness of the picture, and it have a DSLR feel to it, minus the lens and CCD/CMOS sensor dust management. It's grip is big enough to accommodate my hands, prefect for a sharp picture. (note that that's the reason why I am not a fan of the mini digicams, like the Ixus series, they shake too much when i use it). The price is pretty reasonable as well, checking in for a cheap 290+ Euro for the base model without accessories, 329 when I added a 1GB xD memory card to my package.

The site that handled the sales is really efficient, sending the camera over right after the money transfer had gone through, and sending e-mail with each step taken. With that, I had estimated that it will arrive at my doorstep last friday, which it did, right before I leave my place to visit King Ung in Mannheim, making me carry the whole half a meter length box along the way -.-

Anyway, I find that the camera produces very nice picture quality, the zoom is very smooth and handles itself just like how a DSLR would, i.e. by turning the lens barrel. This zooming turned out to be a disadvantage specific to myself though. After the accident 2 years ago that led to my joints at my wrist to be deformed (blame it on the stupid government hospital treatment), my wrist will hurt whenever i carry heavy stuffs or put my wrists at that angle (palms facing up) to support things. The zooming action forces me to put my left wrist at that position, hence will cause pain if I take too long to frame my shots.

The feel of the camera is solid although the body is made entirely out of plastic. It's heaviness gives it a robust feel. Then again, I think I will do my best to prevent it from falling down though, the lens looked fragile :p The 2.5 inch LCD screen of the camera is very bright and shows lots of details. The EVF (Electronic ViewFinder) is a bit letdown with subpar preview quality. Then again, I can always review what I had taken with the LCD screen, so the EVF quality is a non issue to me (I prefer to use the viewfinder instead of the LCD screen to frame my shots).

I will have to take my time to get used to the controls and menus, since I am pretty much accustomed to using the menu system of Canon cameras, so it will take me some time to maximize the potential of this monster. There are various modes available for various scenes, like the beach, snow, incandescent as well as the most powerful manuals functions Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and full manual itself. The customs modes are hidden under layers of menus though, making it a bit hard to carry out shots in a hurry.

The lens have a maximum zoom of 10.7x with no image stabilization capability. some will wonder why I picked one without after emphasizing so much on it in the past. Well, the weight of the camera compensates for the tendency of my hands to shake, which I think, is enough to justify the lack of it... Anyway, the zoom range of the lenses are 28-300mm (135mm equiv.). The wide low end zoom of the lenses means I can start dreaming about taking nice wide angle shots not possible with my old camera, and a whole new perspective of the world ;)

I think I can stop spewing out things that most people who reads this blog can't even understand, and let you guys have a look at the baby itself... Enjoy ;)

My new cam

contents of the box

xD picture cards

cables that came along with the package

The package itself (note: this is not what the camera arrived in)

See Hua
*Let's create a world full of LOVE~

p/s: For a comparison of specs of the cameras that I had considered, go and have a look here.