Out and About with the Fujifilm Finepix S1000fd

Out and About with the Fujifilm Finepix S1000fd

This was actually given to me by my best friend from primary school, author Brian J Savage, whose books you can find on Amazon. Brian's creativity was spurred on by lockdowns and he has now written three volumes of his own Pandemic series. So, one of my "six of the best" compact cameras, courtesy of Brian, is this Fuji Finepix S1000fd bridge camera, first released in 2008; 10MP and with a very wide ranging 5.9-70.8mm f/2.8-5.6 lens. This equates to a "35mm equivalent" of 33-396mm. This is an immense pulling power and has its own dangers in the very real possibility of camera shake. Sadly, early shake reduction systems such as here only up the ISO and bias the programming towards higher shutter speeds, which is best switched off in favour of more conventional techniques.

Handling is actually not too bad, but I'm only cautious with the praise as the rear screen and EVF are so poor that composition is not really that precise. The theory with this camera was that I would offer it to beginners to use, and indeed have done, but it is more difficult to use well than a DSLR would be. The problems relate to slow controls, inconvenient adjustments via buttons, limited aperture options and generally very slow operation. However, all is not bleak as the results are really quite perky and sharp. Colours are good, flare is well controlled and the zoom reach is very useful. Noise soon becomes obtrusive and the close up focusing is also a bit disappointing, but considering its age it really overall performs quite well.

Sadly, not really a camera for beginners who would do much better with something more up to date. Let's have a look at some images to see how I did.The shots at Tyldesley Cemetery were shot an hour or so ago, the others at various times over Christmas.