Digital
 Cameras, equipment and images

290 degree vista of Cowes, Isle of Wight
Taken from the top deck of the Red Funnel Car Ferry on June 6th 1999.
click to see the full size image
My home-made attempt at a digital panorama. I’ve tried one of the demo versions of a vista plug-in, but they seem to lose the detail....
It was taken as nine portrait aspect shots from a Kodak DC210plus set on wide angle. The main problem seems to be the variations in exposure, even though the light source stayed the same. Click on the picture to view and/or download the larger version (300k). It looks quite detailed when panned in the explorer window. ( ‘Kurt’, our VW camper van is in the top left hand corner of the foredeck).

My current main camera is now a Fuji Finepix s9500.
Although not a true SLR (the lens cannot be interchanged), it gives me the scope to take photos or videos of almost anything, without needing any extras. The lens has a 10:1 optical zoom range with two stages of a macro.
It also has a built in flash, eyelevel and waistlevel lcd/tft viewfinders, and manual overrides for every setting. I particularly like the manual zoom ring, ("less is more" is definitely true for that function !), and the video camera option, which provides VHS quality recording with sound.
When I think back over the years, carrying heavy bagfulls of equipment, this gives me everything, and the 9 mPx images can be enlarged to A3 with no degradation. Fitted with a fast 1gB Compact Flash Card, I can take over 250 photos at maximum resolution.
My previous 'main' camera was an Olympus C730 UZ.
With a genuine resolution of 3.2 mPx, (2048x1536), I can print up to A3 size with no discernible grain or pixels.
It has an incredible 10x optical zoom and the viewfinder is an LCD screen inside (as with digital video cameras), giving wysiwyg for exposure as well as focus. It also has full manual override, even with f stops and speeds.....
Prior to that I used a Fuji Finepix 4700. A superb camera, with a maximum res of 2400x1800, 80 shots per 64mB smartcard, and it can even take AVIs, (although these are at very low resolution).
I bought the camera from http://www.digitaldepot.co.uk (in Stevenage, Herts, who were selling for £110 under list price.
Prior to this I used a Kodak DC210 (with the software upgraded to DC210plus).
The maximum resolution was 1152x864, and it could store 105 shots on the 30mb Flashpix card.
Prior to that, my first digital camera was a Sanyo VPC-G200E Digicam. It was only 640x480, but it was extremely well made, with some well thought out features.


my sample images
Hover the mouse over any image for more information, or click to see the larger version.
(some are over 300k, so may take a while to download !).
(most of the Fuji images have been reduced, as the original 2400x1800 files are over 700k !
so the originals are of even better quality)

There are over 100 more of my digital images on the Norfolk Broads Slides page.


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