Out and About with the Fujifilm 6900Z

Out and About with the Fujifilm 6900Z

It was twenty years ago today.....give or take.....that the Fujifilm 6900Z bridge camera was on the shelves. I have been out and about with one today, just to see how it handles and what the quality is like. The experience is difficult at best and starts off with having to source an NP-80 lithium battery pack and a SmartMedia card. Fortunately batteries and charger are quite inexpensive and there was already a SmartMedia card in the camera body. A whopping 128MB! The batteries last about as long as a cheese sandwich does, so a plentiful supply is needed. The camera keeps switching off anyway to conserve battery power. The lens is a 7.8 - 46.8mm f/2.8-3.2 zoom, so the maximum aperture does not suffer too much at full zoom. ISO range is a measly 100 - 400 and 400 is very, very noisy.

This is a Fujifilm SuperCCD, so it has 3.3MP in a honeycomb pattern, which theoretically can be extrapolated to give a 6MP output, but whether or not that works out in practice has always been a source of debate. The lens quality is fair, but no more than that. What is really horrible is how slow the camera is and how tiny the rear screen is. The EVF is als terrible. In daylight, it is barely possible to see what is being shot.

Nevertheless, I did manage some shots, so let's see how I did:

Fujifilm 6900Z with SmartMedia card.



Buying chips to add to the picnic.



Squirrel feasting.



Pennington Flash.



Ducks!





Mossy Tree.



Duck post.



Swan.



Walk Like a Girl.



Robin Bird Feeder.



Conclusion: Results OK for the web, but not an easy way to shoot pictures.