Contents: Camedia
C-700UZ * Camedia C-220Z *
Camedia C-750UZ * Fujifilm FinePix F455
Canon PowerShot A510 *
RCR-V3 batteries *
Canon Pixma iP4000 * Update at 3rd
June
*
lens tubes
* batteries
The Ricoh RDC 2E camera - Left
from the viewfinder and Right from the lens, which is covered by a shutter
My first digital camera was a Ricoh RDC 2E with
an optical viewfinder and a detachable LCD monitor, which, when removed, left a
small pocketable camera. It had neither flash nor zoom lens, and with a
fixed focal length of 35mm (equivalent), there was little scope to overcome the
very low resolution of a third of a million MP by making panoramas - overlapping
photos that are later "stitched" together to make a bigger one. Sadly it used
only prohibitively expensive cards for storage, and which have since disappeared
without ever having reduced in price first.
My second was a Fujifilm FinePix 1400Zoom,
a 1.3 MP small camera with both an optical viewfinder and an LCD monitor on the
back. It had a 3x optical zoom and took exceptionally vibrant pictures. It was,
however, almost fully automatic in use, and the time came when I wanted
something more versatile. I determined that although 1.3 MP was almost big
enough for most purposes as long as there is no need to crop at all, a 2 MP
would be better - a good compromise between picture quality and the space
required to store the pictures. After three days of intensive poring over
reviews on the 'Net, one model stood out as ideal for my purposes - the Olympus
Camedia C-2100UZI, possessing a 10x optical zoom lens with added image
stabilisation as used by many video camcorders.
The Olympus Camedia C-2100UZI
Deciding on a camera model is one thing - finding one to buy is another! The C-2100 had already been discontinued for a couple of years so there were no new ones, I had just missed a batch of reconditioned ones and I could find no used ones anywhere on eBay, so it was back to the reviews to find that it had been discontinued in favour of the C-700UZ with much the same specification, but without image stabilisation. Digital camera models don't stay current for long and it, too, had been discontinued, replaced by the C-730UZ, a much more expensive prospect, but I managed to buy a reconditioned C-700 from an eBay seller in the USA. It came with a 5 year Mack warranty and a Powerhaus charger, now the favourite of my NiMH chargers. Claiming against the guarantee would mean posting the camera back to the USA, possibly incurring another VAT charge by HM Customs upon its return, but I have been fortunate (touch wood) in not having any problems that haven't rectified themselves after removing the batteries or the memory card for a few seconds.
The Olympus Camedia C-700UZ
A couple of years with the C-700 was a delight and, sad to say, I did very little indeed in that time with any of my film cameras, so it's clear that I have been fully converted to digital photography for all practical purposes. So, although I was far from dissatisfied with my C-700, well, apart from the single strap pivot that is, I was following the Camedia C-7×× camera line as models were appearing and disappearing from the Olympus range and I noticed that the top model, the C-750UZ, appeared to be the last of the line to use AA batteries, as the owners of the latest cameras were being forced to use small proprietary Lithium Ion ones.
Here I feel I must digress. Many years ago I bought a Hitachi video camera - a big job that you carry in one hand while carrying a recorder unit in the other. A few years later, I bought an Amstrad simple camcorder. What they had in common was that the unavailability of reasonably priced replacement batteries rendered them useless. I still have to this day a wide collection of 35mm cameras, the most recent models of which are very battery-dependent, yet they each need a quite different battery type and keeping even one replacement of each is very expensive. When digital cameras appeared, with all but the most arrogant makers' models taking the ubiquitous AA batteries, I was delighted, especially when NiMH types replaced the NiCad, and development of the former has more than doubled their output in the last couple of years.
Perhaps I am over sensitive to the gradual reversion away from the AA battery back to a diversity of special types, and even though they are all rechargeable, replacements will be needed eventually, and I do not want to be in the position again of owning a useless camera due to battery deprivation. Remember that it only took a few over-zealous, spiteful, people to deprive photographers - a comparatively small population - of the wonderful Mercury button battery, but any neo-Cromwellian types trying to exterminate the AA battery would have almost all of the population against them.
So, to return to my thread, suddenly realising that the C-750UZ was probably the last of the Camedia Ultra Zooms that would ever be worth buying, and discovering that they had already been discontinued, I was very nearly panicked into bidding on a year-old used one on eBay, this time from a UK seller. I won it, but I paid more for it than the new cost of one of the later models, but I feel that it was worthwhile, and the three 128 meg xD cards that came with it offset the price quite a lot. Although a 1 gigabyte xD card has appeared, the C-750 can only handle one half that size. Not a big deal really as you're really risking a lot of eggs in a basket that size.
More used cameras of this type are available
because their owners are moving to
a
Digital Single-lens Reflex following a quite substantial fall in
the prices of some of them.
My new-to-me C-750 has inspired me to use the manual controls more, probably because it is possible to select a combination of settings and save the configuration into one of four 'My Modes' for easy reselection - as long as you can remember what each one is for. For the first time, thanks to its accessory shoe, I can use flashguns other than the built-in one, including the Centon ring flash from my 35mm equipment. The only disappointment has been the weather here in the UK Midlands during Spring 2005 - too cold and dull to make photo expeditions worthwhile.
The Olympus Camedia C-750UZ -
photo taken by the C-700UZ
Lens tubes for the Camedia C-7** range of cameras
To add a filter or other lens accessory to the camera, an adapter tube is required and several are available in a variety of filter thread sizes, 55mm from Olympus, 52mm from Raynox, 43mm from Tiffen for example, and you have to choose the one(s) that will enable you to fit the accessories of your choice, such as in these illustrated instances, a Haze filter, collapsible lens hood or stereo beam splitter. The most important reason to fit such a tube though, is the protection it affords against damage to the quite vulnerable camera lens focus assembly.
The Camedia C-220Z was offered at a markedly reduced price on Amazon UK's web site and as it uses the same SmartMedia cards and AA batteries as the C-700, I ordered one in haste - too much haste in fact, because I failed to notice in time that I could have had a free case with it and had to buy one separately later. It is fully automatic in use with no manual overrides, something I began to miss after a while, though it's very handy and small enough to carry almost anywhere.
A Very Small Digital Camera on Trial
A recent near-purchase was a Fujifilm FinePix F445, an extremely compact camera advertised to be the size of a deck of playing cards. With an optical viewfinder and a 2.5" LCD screen, it looked on paper and in a demonstration to be a very handy device, particularly for Joyce, but luckily, it came from QVC, the Shopping Channel, and we had thirty days in which to return it, for we were not happy with it. When I took it for a walk in Rookery Park, there seemed to be so little to hold it by that camera shake was a problem; the big LCD screen was invisible in bright weather conditions and the macro function was very hit and miss. It was also totally dependant on a separate cradle for charging and picture transfer.
The Fujifilm Finepix F455 (left) alongside the Ricoh GR-1, one of the smallest full-frame 35mm cameras
Furthermore, in taking a little flat Lithium ion battery, it broke my AA battery rule - though I was prepared to waive that if it had been otherwise brilliant - but it was very expensive for an automatic only. If you notice, digital cameras tend to be priced much more in relation to their megapixels than their other qualities and features. We posted it back to Liverpool and I began anew the search through reviews to find a replacement pocketable model for me now that Joyce has taken over my Olympus C-220Z
If you look through my collection of 35mm cameras on PBase, you will look in vain for anything by Canon or Nikon, two brands that I learned to avoid ever since the 1960s. With my experience of a Canon printer in mind (see below), however, I looked for the first time at Canon digital cameras and found that they have a PowerShot 'A' range that is powered by AA batteries, though sadly not by RCR-V3 ones (see further below). Perhaps it's time to dump some old film era prejudices in this digital age, though I can't ignore what I feel about Canon's crippleware policy with some of their DSLRs, even though I'm most unlikely to become a customer for such a device.
The Canon PowerShot A510 - it's hard to imagine a more endearing digital compact.
My choice of the PowerShot A510 was quite easily made - and saving around £23 by buying it from 7dayshop also seemed a good idea to help defray the £31 cost including VAT of a 3 year extended Canon guarantee. This saving has largely evaporated, however, as the 512MB extra SD card that I ordered with it arrived thirteen days later, and I had to buy a 64MB one from the local Tesco just to get past the eleven quality picture limit that the Canon supplied 16MB MM card imposes. After SmartMedia and xD cards I now have to have Secure Digital or MultiMedia ones.
Annoyances like that certainly detract from the enjoyment that trying out a new camera can bring but we soldier on and find that there's plenty to enjoy with the A510. I'm not going to write a full review here since I agree totally with Steve's review. I think that it's sufficient to say that it's packed with features and manual overrides that I wouldn't have expected to find in such a reasonably priced compact - at half the price of the Fuji F445 - and there are accessories available to extend its scope further.
One is the WP-DC60 waterproof housing for underwater photography to a depth of 130 feet or for all-weather use, priced at just under the cost of replacing an A510 in the event of a disastrous dunking.
Another is a lens tube that allows the fitting of 52mm filters, lens hood or tele- and wide-angle converter lenses. The tube bayonets into the A510 so it is not interchangeable with the screw-thread ones for the Camedia C-700 and C-750 - but many of the filters and attachments are! Incidentally, for £15 the Canon lens tube is of black plastic but for around the same price there is a brushed silver-finished metal one available from an eBay seller in Hong Kong, complete with UV filter and lens cap. A snag with the use of the tube and its accessories is that their presence obscures a large chunk of the view through the centrally placed optical viewfinder, and the Canon's LCD screen is no easier to see under a bright sky than that of the Fuji or any other, which is why it seems strange to me that some low priced digicams, plus a few higher-priced ones, are being produced with no viewfinders at all other than an LCD screen! I do hope that photographers will vote with their wallets and put a well-deserved end to this nonsense.
I discovered recently that when taking photos from around 2 feet from the subject at mid to high zoom (Macro setting off), the field of view as seen through the optical viewfinder coincides very well indeed with that in the LCD
Currently
7dayshop sell a range of collapsible
bellows - with and without magnifiers - that
Velcro® over an LCD screen to provide the necessary shade but at a loss of
compactness.
From Victorian times
onward, reflex viewing cameras were fitted with a collapsible,
flip-open shade with magnifier for a clearer view of the focussing screen and I
am
surprised that no manufacturers have so far adopted this idea for their LCD
screens.
Two views of the A510 fitted with
a metal lens tube and a UV filter - and the Tamrac 5690 case mentioned below
The A510 lacks a normal remote control function but it can be controlled via a USB lead from a computer - or a laptop in the field - by the supplied software, which also includes a photo stitcher for panoramas that is very much faster than the ones I have been using. In fact, the Canon software supplied with this camera is far and away superior to that that came with any of the Camedias, where you are expected to pay Olympus extra for an only slightly better version!
I feel, though I haven't conducted any experiments to conclusively prove it, that the results from the A510 are not quite as sharp as those from my Camedia cameras, but they respond well to being sharpened in software and that's all that matters to me as I don't use PictBridge to print from unedited picture files. The main criticism I have of the A510, along with so many other digicams, is its single neck/wrist strap mounting point. I suppose it's fine if you only want to dangle it from your wrist but I can tell you that the C-750 is so much more controllable, secure-feeling and comfortable to carry thanks to its two neck strap lugs. Also, In buying the A510 I broke a resolve that I made only a couple of months ago to never buy another digital camera that has no accessory shoe, the one on the C-750 having turned out to be such a welcome addition, particularly for adding a reasonably priced flashgun. There is such an extra Canon brand flashgun for the A510/520 though that fits alongside the camera on a bracket, being operated as a slave to the built-in flash, and there is another brand of a similar device at a more affordable price,
I foresee that this is going to be a well-used item and I went ahead and telephoned Canon UK's Extended Warranty department (0870 122 6543 in case you need it) and pledged £31 to extend it to three years. The cost of even a straightforward repair to a digital camera is so high these days that it seems to be good value.
While browsing in Tesco for an interim SD card, I came across a Tamrac 5690 bag for £4.99 which takes the A510 neatly with no space to spare but with a pocket for cards and spare batteries. A Google search on this case shows that it is more usually sold for £9.99 and that Tamrac's size chart shows that the A510 should need the case the next size up. I can tell you that it doesn't unless you have a long neck strap on the camera that you need to tuck in. See illustration above. For a firm that is so well known for their cases, the strap is extremely rough and uncomfortable to unprotected skin.
One thing that I have noticed from the results with the A510 is that the vast majority of pictures exhibit a tilt of several degrees - buildings and lamp posts appear to lean and always to the right. It has been happening so often that I began to suspect a camera fault, so I have experimented with resting it on flat surfaces, lining up with the top of the camera, etc. and the fault is clearly mine. Perhaps it is the narrowness of the camera - my hands are so close together that there is not the usual sense of 'levelness' when holding it. Anyway, Paint Shop Pro's 'Straighten' and 'Perspective' functions have been heavily used lately.
I should mention that the A510 has a bigger sibling, the A520, which is a 4MP model compared to the A510's 3.2MP, though it is otherwise identical. If you regularly print at A4 or larger, you may think the extra cost - and increased CCD noise - worthwhile.
Update at 5th July 2006
Since writing the above, I have used the following cameras:
Olympus Camedia C-4040Z and C-5050Z. These are superbly designed and made as technology would allow and were originally priced accordingly but because dSLRs were so expensive, they still sold well. Because they are available used so much cheaper now, they are tremendous bargains.
Canon PowerShot S2 IS. I chose this after reading lots of glowing reviews, but reviews don't always tell you what you need to know. It is capable of excellent results and is so rapid in use, but it so different from my other cameras that I had to re-learn the position of its control buttons and menus just about every time I took it out. This has been so annoying that I haven't used it for weeks so I have decided to put it up for sale.
Kodak EasyShare P850. This has similar functions to those of the S2 IS but it is not so different from my Olympus cameras in use so it fits right in. It even has a jog wheel like the one on the C-5050. It is so easy to get along with and likeable that I acquired its big brother, the P880 with the wider angle lens and which has turned out to be my absolute favourite digital camera. Reviews mention it being sluggish without stating which firmware version they are testing. Upgrading my P850's firmware to v1.01 and the P880's to 1.02 made a big difference. The Canon S2 IS is still faster than either of them but the Kodaks swamp it in the most important respect, they are the cameras I want to take out with me!
What made me initially dubious about the Kodaks was that they don't take AA batteries but a single Klic 5001 Lithium Ion one, but this turns out to be their great strength. They last for ages, especially with the P880 and its manual zoom control, they recharge in about three hours in a neat little charger - or in a Printer Dock if you have one - and they are so light to carry. I am so impressed with them that I started looking for a pocketable model that uses them, without luck so far.
Between them, the P850 and P880 do just about all that I expect of them except that they have no remote control and I would like the LCD screens to tilt the way the 5050Z one does. I could really sell all of my others but I just can't bring myself to part with my Olympuses, helped by the fact that none of them are worth much now that they are well out of production. The little Canon A510 is still my only pocketable model and its value has plummeted after I dropped it a few inches onto the car sill and it ricocheted into the road! It still works fine but it has a few scuff marks in its shiny livery. This only leaves the S2 IS, which I think I could live without.
RCR-V3 Lithium-Ion Batteries and Chargers
A piece of relatively new technology, a rechargeable version of the CR-V3 Lithium battery, which was designed to take the place of a pair of AA batteries offers users of many Nickel Metal Hydride powered cameras the option of the newer Lithium Ion, which is claimed to hold more power than the equivalent pair of NiMH batteries, with a longer storage life and shorter recharging time.
It has cost me much in money and in many fraught hours to discover that there are at least two types of RCR-V3 battery - both having two main contact areas, for the camera but one type has an extra, smaller contact between them. A charger for the first type has a pair of symmetrical contacts and the second type has one of its pair of contacts in the centre. The important thing to remember is that they cannot charge the other type's battery!
There is yet a third type
that I haven't yet seen - it has
additional contacts at the end of
the battery
that is blank on the other two types. It of course also needs its own
charger!
Unfortunately, whether on eBay or their own web sites, sellers rarely specify which type they have, though the existence of a central contact can sometimes be seen in some of the illustrations of their batteries.
Type 1: the plainest type - just two battery contacts (left) with symmetrical charger contacts (right)
Type 2: an extra small contact on the battery matches the asymmetrical "central" charger contact
The web site: http://www.steves-digicams.co.uk/nimh_batteries.html#crv3 shows some details of how some RCR-V3 batteries will not work with some chargers, and my advice is to to ensure that you only buy matched batteries and chargers. I am in no doubt though that NiMH AA batteries are a more reliable and economical option, although I have to say that, especially with cold fingers, it easier to change a pair of these RCR-V3 in my C-750 and there is the additional feeling of certainty that they have been fitted correctly because they will only go into their slots the right way round. When tipping out a set of four AA batteries, I can usually be fairly sure to catch three of them but the fourth has usually to be searched for in long grass - or something worse!
After struggling for several years with two Lexmark printers in succession, a 700 with annoying paper feed and jamming problems and a Z55 with terminal streaking of the black cartridges' outputs, I went out and bought a Canon Pixma iP4000.
I'd had an urgent print job to do and there wasn't much time to choose the replacement but I was impressed by the current "Which?" Consumers' Association magazine report on inkjets, in which four of their five Best Buy choices were Canons (the other was an Epson). I decided upon the iP4000 as they declared it to be the most economical model and I went off to buy one.
It's been a long time since I last was so impressed by a new printer (it was an H-P Deskjet about ten years ago at four times the price of this Pixma!), and although it is early days, this seems to be excellent in all respects: photo quality, black text, reliability of paper feed, duplex printing, two separate and selectable paper trays, and, because it is so quiet, I can print at any time of the night without disturbing anyone. Oh, and it looks so good too.
It uses five ink cartridges - four of the same size of black, cyan, magenta and yellow dyes for colour, and a larger black pigmented ink for black text. A complete set of Canon cartridges costs a bit less than a pair of cartridges for a Lexmark, but there are several brands of alternative cartridges available at huge savings. I have received a set from Abacus UK that cost £9.20 including postage (via eBay) awaiting the day that my Canon ones run out.
Since the above, the yellow, cyan and magenta ones have been separately reported as having run out by the Pixma software and I have replaced each with the "OA100" branded ones from Abacus and the results are exactly as before. Looking for another replacement set, I found and bought two sets of "Pro-Jet" cartridges for an amazing £9.48 including postage from Best Price Ink. Better still, compatible cartridges are currently available at Poundland at, of course, £1 each!
The Canon Pixma iP4000 open and
closed. Venetian blinds are being reflected in the flat shiny top.
- Page under continuous construction -
Last updated 5th July 2006