Mar 04, 2009 01:28 PM
2489 Views
I was on a lookout for a slim profile camera as a gift for my sister-in-law - mainly because girls do not seem to appreciate that bigger lens cameras, while ugly looking, have better optics and hence better photos. For them, looks come first.
Anyway to each his own. My primary consideration was a non-portuding lens - the kind that doesnt jut out of the camera body - a completely internal lens. I saw a Sony model which was 15K, way more than my budget. And it had a touchscreen LCD, which seems cool initially, but becomes a major pain to use if you want to change your settings frequently. The Olympus Mju 1040, which had a 3x internal zoom lens, seemed perfect till I saw the Fuji Finepix Z100.
Amazingly slick looking piece, esp in silver brushed metal, it has a diagonal lens cover slider which is absolutely unique in the marketplace. Instead of a on-off button, it uses the lens cover slider to switch the camera on and off. And the movement of the lens cover is a delight - it opens and closes with a delightful click. You would spend hours just opening and closing the cover if you didnt have to worry about the camera going bust:) The form factor is also very thin - its thinner than my N81 phone and you can easily slide it into your jeans pocket and take it to a party for example. Specifications are also good - 5x optical zoom and 8 mega pixels. Came with a 2GB card too.
The lens cover also has a embossed Z on it which lights up when you take a photo - just to tell the subject when the photo is being taken. Nothing useful, but just adds to the coolness. The user interface is pretty normal, with variety of scene modes. The button layout on the back is standard, except that the D pad also rotates like the ipod. So you can use the D-pad regularly or you can scroll up and down using the scroll options
Photography-wise, the camera lacks manual controls but then the target audience of this camera probably does not even understand what is a manual control - so its quite understandable. I didnt extensively use the camera at night or in low light conditions, but in normal light conditions, the photographs come out good. It has a tendency to produce a little grainy pictures in the Auto mode, but that can easily be solved by moving into some other mode and turning down ISO to 100 or 200. The colors are natural, with no exaggerated colors like in some cheaper digicams.
So in summary, its an amazing looking camera, with point-and-shoot image quality, bundled 2 GB card and all this at 9, 999/- only
