| People often ask me about which camera
I use to take the images for this website. And they do so because
walking and photography are two utterly different pastimes that
you very are often doing at exactly the same time.
I cannot imagine what it must be like to walk without a camera
- so often are you confronted by stunning views and scenery that
it would seem like a crying shame not to capture the moment.
But as with all walk related items, a camera needs to be lightweight
- and also I believe it needs to be simple to use.
Dealing with the weight issue - it would be very easy to carry
one of the tiny modern digital cameras that fits easily into an
anorak pocket. The trouble with these is that almost all of them
come with a basic 3x lens - and these tend not to have the required
wide-angle, nor do they have anywhere near enough magnification
for distant objects.
 No
matter how good the digital technology nowadays, a camera really
is only as good as the bit of glass in front of it. When the manufacturers
talk about a "digital zoom" - forget it - you will be
confronted by images dominated by heavily pixellated and grainy
images.
The obvious alternative would be a full blown Single Lens Reflex
(SLR) camera and there are many and varied models on the market
- all of which undoubtedly give you fine results - especially given
that you can change lenses to suit your subject.
However, these models tend to be expensive and the cost keeps
growing the more lenses you require. As does the weight of your
rucksack. For me the answer has been the remarkable FujiFilm FinePix
S9500. Although it looks like a full-blown SLR it is remarkably
light in weight and its fixed 10x lens does a truly excellent job
of dealing with just about any subject I point it at in the Westcountry
landscapes.
Because it is fixed you get none of the interior dust problems
most of my professional photographer colleagues have with their
SLR's - and FinePix have improved the model greatly since they built
my old S602Z by making the telephoto zoom fully manual rather than
annoyingly powered by battery. The FinePix S9500 reacts quickly
as soon as you turn on the power and is truly impressive for non-tech-head
walkers who are quite happy to allow the thing to operate in automatic
mode.
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Here's some technical stuff from Fujifilm - but
if you were to ask me to recommend the ultimate camera for walkers
- then it would quite simply have to be the FujiFilm FinePix S9500.
FinePix S9500 Zoom features at a
glance:
New Fujifilm Super CCD sensor with 9.0 million
effective pixels
New 28-300mm (10.7x) Fujinon zoom lens with manual
twist-barrel zoom control
Class-leading sensitivity setting of ISO 1600 for
photography in low light conditions
Low sensitivity of ISO 80 for ultra-high quality
photography
1.8" tilting LCD screen for easy high and
low angle shooting
Ultra-fast response times (0.01 second shutter
lag and 0.8 second start-up)
Real-time histogram to assist exposure settings
before shooting
Highlight Warning feature for displaying highlight
areas in playback
VGA movie capture of 30 frames per second with
zoom capability and sound
Closed unit design to eliminate dust accumulation
on the CCD
Hotshoe and PC sync terminal
RAW format shooting for uncompressed and unprocessed
images
xD-Picture Card(tm) providing large storage capacity,
lower power consumption and fast write speeds (16MB to 1GB capacities
currently available)
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