I Love It But It Could Be So Much Better With Small Changes

For the past 25 years, I’ve shot 35 millimeter film in my Minolta Maxxum or Yashica TL ElectroX, which was my first camera. I’ve never had a complaint about the quality of my images until the late 90s when I noticed that some of the new non-pro 35mm and Advantix cameras were producing images that sometimes looked sharper than mine. In the past year, and not before, I’ve also noticed this with amateur digital images. People began to post excellent images of their families and pets online and I knew that they weren’t doing this with the $19,000 Mamiya digital camera we used at work, or the $1000 Nikon I’m looking at getting next. No. these were those tiny, non-professional-looking little digital cameras, like the Fuji FinePix S3100.

I was going to wait one more year for the Digital technology to finally seduce me, but I decided to bite the bullet by buying this non-pro camera “for my kids.” In my mind, my kids deserved no less than what this camera offered based on the specs shown at the store. Needless to say, they are complaining that I use it too much. Okay, their actual words are that “I hog it.” Do I like it more than my trusty and venerable 35 millimeter Minolta Maxxum 7000i? I must confess, yes. There are very good reasons for this.

The Fuji FinePix S3100 is a decent camera, and an excellent digital one. I’m not going to unfairly compare this camera to my medium format camera for image quality, but the Fuji FinePix S3100 is infinitely cheaper to shoot. Shooting medium format is a minimum $15 per roll. ($5 for the roll and $4 to process before any prints) and that’s just 12 shots. So I only use that for paying customers. 35mm is cheaper at $2 per roll, $2 processing and maybe $5 for 30 prints. But the freedom of digital better is practically free photos. When I was a teen I used to spend more than $200 per month on photography. If I had this, I would have spent maybe $10 in batteries. Of course I’d be up the creek without a paddle getting prints in 1980, except from commercial printers – if they knew what a jpeg was.

I did notice that the batteries included with the camera were gone after about a hundred photos. The second set of batteries are doing much better. Rechargeable batteries might be a good idea. I carry the camera with me constantly. I still kick myself for not having a camera when I saw that horse in a trailer passing me by with his head sticking out of the window. Yep, and then there was that time a huge eagle slammed into the grill of a red mustang. The eagle lost. I will never forget the sight of the eagle with its huge wings spread out smashed into the radiator like some reverse hood ornament, its claws gnarled up in its death throws. I also won’t forget the look of the stranger who owned the car. But I don’t have a photo of it and 15 years later I kick myself. I will probably never miss a good photo again.

WHAT IT COMES WITH
It comes with a useless 16 MB XD card, good for only 8 high quality pics. I never used it. I picked up a 256 Mb card for $50. There is a USB port with supplied cable, and a video out connection with cable for direct connect to the television. It also has a 5 volt connection for AC power supplies.

THE MANUAL
At first, I was impressed by the manual, because it’s thick, despite the fact that it’s in English only. It’s good that I don’t have to skip past Spanish and French to get to my dumbed down and severely edited English version. This manual isn’t severely edited. That’s good, but they dumbed it down. In all that text, there’s nothing technical except maybe the specs page. Even there, they left out some info I was looking for. I feel there’s always room to appease tech heads. When I rate a flash, I want to do it with its guide number. That’s not mentioned here.

IMAGE QUALITY
The Fujinon lens is sharp and delivers good high contrast saturated photos, but don’t confuse it with a truly professional lens. Attach this lens to my other cameras and I’d be optionless. Don’t get me wrong. You can take professional quality images with this lens, but there are limitations to this lens such as the incredibly narrow f-stop range of 2.8-3.0 2.8 is good. 3.0 is good – on one end of a spectrum. I would expect a 16 or a 32 on the other end. I will admit that the depth of field is surprisingly deep at the 2.8-3.0 settings. I’m obviously dealing with different physics in this smaller lens. But I would like to be able to control depth of field more. The lens is apparently uncoated and I have seen chromatic aberration in photos that would have been flare-free with my coated lenses. I could have just said that I noticed “lens flare” but how often do you get to use chromatic aberration in a sentence?

The lens claims to be the equivalent of a 39 to 234 mm on a 35 millimeter camera. It doesn’t actually seem that wide or that telephoto in use to me. I could be wrong. It does give good zoom though. I think that it’s a bit too active, moving home after you turn it off. That means you will usually zoom back in if you don’t usually shoot wide, and who does? Just thinking about battery waste.

Four megapixels is more than you’ll get from Wal-mart or your typical photofinisher if they scan your negatives to CD. Wal-mart will scan your negs to only 2 megapixels, and the attendants don’t understand how to set it higher when you ask. 4 megapixels is a bigger photo than most people are accustomed to dealing with. Bigger than your screen. It’ll get you a decent looking 8x10 from your digital photo lab, and you can push a good picture farther.

Pictures larger than your screen used to be a problem for non-graphic artists but now XP will fit any sized image onto your screen and browsers will also fit large jpegs. Also XP will print large images in sizes you want on your printer. So there is no excuse to set this camera to a lower quality setting if you have XP.

The full quality is amazing. As good as the images look on the screen, they look better in print. And when you get commercial digital prints, you will see a new saturated color and color balance that lets you see how terrible your photofinisher was before. Wal-mart does the best digital photo finishing I’ve seen. They expose your images to normal photographic paper and develop them in chemicals like regular pictures. This yields a cheap highest quality digital print that will outlive you.

There are roughly 4 million pixels in photos taken on the high quality setting (2272x1704), which is the only mode I will shoot in. I can think of no reason to shoot at anything less than the best quality. Shooting at the piddly 640x480 mode is an insult to this fine camera! Let me explain why:

Imagine taking a picture of your aunt and for no reason you have it at the piddly 640x480 setting. Later on she says, “My wonderful nephew/neice! I love that picture! I’ve never looked better! Make me an 8x10 please please please!” Then you have to explain that because you shot it at low quality, again for no good reason, you can probably only get a decent wallet out of it because, again for no good reason, there’s no detail in the image. No amount of tweaking will make it look sharp at 8x10. She says the image looks just fine in her Email and then insists you print it at 8x10 anyway. It comes back blurry and globby. And this could have been avoided had you just shot it in high quality mode. Tisk tisk.

That’s one reason why I purchased the 256 Mb card, to avoid the urge to compromise quality in order to squeeze in a few more pics. I’m rarely going to shoot over 130 photos before dumping it to my computer, and if I have to, I’ll just bring a laptop, or an extra card. Okay. We have that settled. Forget that the camera has low quality modes. If you ever intend to print what you shoot, at home or commercially you absolutely can’t shoot in lower quality modes. It will bite you in the butt if you do. Trust me.

With my 256 MB card, I can shoot approximately one hundred thirty-four 2272x1704 images at the highest quality F setting. Here’s where the dumbing down of the manual kicks in: It says I can shoot approximately two hundred sixty-six 2272x1704 images at the N quality setting. I’ve tested the N setting. It’s a Jpeg, just like the F setting, same size and apparent Jpeg quality setting yet I can supposedly save twice as many. I can’t find any explanation of the difference between these settings. They didn’t mention it because, God forbid anyone should be confused with specs. I defer to the F setting for now. These numbers are all conservative estimates. Jpeg files are variable in size. Depending on your subject matter, you might fit twice as many images. Looking at my fuji directory, my 100 or so images are 1161 Kb to 2081Kb

WHITE BALANCE
I’m not used to shooting indoors without a flash, but this camera usually produces color-balanced photos no matter where you shoot. It works well under tungsten (typical incandescent lights), fluorescent, daylight, and even overcast daylight. Overcast daylight can look a bit too blue and this is a nice smart compensation. Only astute pros will bother to compensate for overcast outdoor images or even own an 81A-81E filter. Auto compensation doesn’t always work. I have seen a couple of orange-ish and bluish photos, but shooting is generally carefree when there’s adequate light.

AVAILABLE LIGHT
This camera makes shooting stills by the window or away from it, obscenely easy. I went to my entertainment center and shot some glass balls and made a nice still without even trying. I didn’t have to set anything.

MACRO MODE
The camera focuses pretty closely, but if you press the macro button, it gets as close as 3.9 inches. You won’t get a full frame of a ladybug, but you will get one of your prize rose.

THE CAMERA BODY
The camera is small, not tiny, and with the lens hood attached, I could pass it off as a serious camera if I took it to a shoot. It’s a bit too light. Okay. It’s way too light. I don’t think that cameras benefit from lightness. I know well about squeezing the button instead of mashing it down. Still I have created several blurred photos with this camera due to camera vibration. You have to be careful about pressing that button. The camera has almost no mass and thus little inertia to dampen the shock of your finger. Yes, there is a benefit to being heavy. You will be shooting in lower light because you can with this camera, and thus at slower shutter speeds, so you will run into the occasional motion blur.


THE FLASH SYSTEM
From the dawn of cameras, camera bodies have offered multiple ways to flash. Hotshoes and PC plugs. X for electronic flash and M for flashbulbs, which sync up slower (okay, I’m dating myself). This camera offers nothing but the pop up flash it comes with. This is the weak link. The flash is usable, but not at a wedding unless you’re front row center because the flash isn’t powerful at all. Don’t buy this camera to use at a dark indoor event where you will need a flash from more than 11 feet unless the event is well-lit or outdoors. My suggestion is to get up and be rude and get in front of the bride, because if you sit in the pew, you will likely not be happy with the results. The camera has no hot shoe or PC plug (Push Contact), meaning you can’t connect your existing flashes or flash accessories to this camera. In normal use this is no problem. The teeny tiny popup flash is more than adequate for typical work and picnic pictures, but the manual tells you pointblank that the flash isn’t suited for weddings since it’s only effective to 11 feet. With such modest flash power, you’d think they’d give you an option to use the two powerful flashes you’ve relied upon for decades or your 500 watt/sec Novatrons. This camera could take wonderful portraits in a studio setting if I could connect it to studio lights. For no good reason, the camera is devoid of a hot shoe or a simple PC plug. But I will admit, I haven't seen a PC plug on a new camera in years. Still, if the world jumps off the bridge of quality, will you follow, Fuji? Back in the day, even the cheapest cameras all assumed you already owned a flash, especially cameras costing $300 dollars. I'm surprised they assume I own a tripod.

Also the same manual that tells you to never remove the lens shade/adapter ring, warns you to remove the lens shade before using the flash. If you don’t, there might be a shadow of the lens hood in the photo. Huh? You don’t tell people that! You raise the flash a few measly inches higher than the lens hood that you had to supply in order to combat that nasty chromatic aberration. Instead of offering this catch22, they could have offered a hotshoe. Ahem! Any flash attached to the top of the camera would be high enough above the lens shade to avoid the shadow.

They also probably thought you were too dull to understand that you would only see the shadow when you zoom out to the widest angle. I haven't encountered the shadow.

No points on the flash from me. I didn't like or use the free flash that came with my Minolta, but at least Minolta didn't marry me to the flash. I do have slave flashes that can sync with the camera’s flash, but that’s no good at events where other people are taking photos. No amount of warning other people to wait until you shoot will stop them. Plus my slaves make everyone else's photos look better. I'm supposed to be the pro on the scene.

I will note that my slave flashes work perfectly with the camera though I have virtually no control over exposure. The photos come out bright and saturated as if my slaves were ten times as powerful as they are with film. I have to actually subdue the slaves. My slave with the 120 guide number is almost too powerful to use in a medium room, even bounced. It looks as if the model is standing near a nuclear explosion. It's like shooting with fine grain 1000 speed film. It makes me wonder, why the tiny flash when a moderately powered flash would go so far with this amazing camera? They were so wrong not to include a hotshoe. My 25 year old Vivitar 285 flash (yes, I still use it) has a guide number of 120 but can be reduced to half, fouth, eigth and sixteenth power and has auto modes down to f2.8 at 70 feet. WHY? WHY? WHY? Manoman, would I have light to spare at a wedding!

THE DISPLAY/VIEWFINDER
It’s okay. 60,000 pixels for the 1.5-inch LCD monitor and 110,000 pixels for the eye-level viewfinder. Neither look as good as real life or the pictures you will take, but they work. In humid Louisiana, I continually have problems with my eyepiece or my glasses fogging. Switching to an LCD panel is great for that problem. If things are hard to see, you can temporarily boost the brightness with a press from your thumb.

TAKING VIDEOS
The S3100 takes videos too, but not very well. It's an AVI file, 320x240 but at 64Kbps and 10 frames per second instead of 30. We’re talking really crappy silent video here, nothing to preserve memories with. I caught some video of my dog catching a Frisbee but because of the low quality and low fps, it looks like it was shot in the 60s with a super 8 camera. No. Actually, I think Super 8 looks better. Some webcams look better.

You still don't understand how bad this video is. This is ultra horrible, useless video. It's like a time capsule back to the earliest digital video. It's not like a 320x20 VCD. VCDs are the same size but they throw data at you at 1394Kbps, not 64Kbps. The difference is like night and day. This is blotchy utterly useless video. You can get better video of your family from Circle K security cameras. Okay. I think I made that clear enough.

But hey! If you’re not happy with the standard S3100 video quality, you can change it to be twice as small and so you can't see how crappy it is -- unless you dare try to view it full screen!

The camera gets an F minus for video. It's the only thing about the camera that's worse than the flash. As pitiful as the flash is, it is useful most of the time. This digital video is from 1990. I've shot video last century on floppy discs in Sony Mavicas that were better. When I bought the camera, I thought I'd at least be able to get web video with it.

The camera is fixed on wide angle while shooting video. If you zoom, it will be digital zoom. Just when you thought it was as crappy as it could get, eh?

Videos have a maximum length of 60 seconds no matter how much room you have on your card. If you want more video, you’ll have to do it in chunks or switch to ultra crappy teeny tiny video mode for 120 second videos.

DIGITAL ZOOM
Digital zoom is the worst idea that ever came to photography. It was a way to legally advertise your lens as a super powerhouse when it really wasn’t. The S3100 buys into the lie but doesn’t flaunt it. I think they included the feature because there may be some sucker who thinks this feature is important. In the next paragraph I will prove beyond doubt or counter argument, that digital zoom is not only completely unneeded, but a detriment and a lie:

When you use digital zoom, software within the camera “pretends” that your lens has more zooming power than it really has. The camera shoots the picture normally and then “blows up” the image as if your lens were really that powerful. The thing is, as you digitally zoom, the image you’re looking places LESS information into the same frame. Let me state this again. The more you digitally zoom, the LESS info you are placing in the same frame. You’re only pretending to dig deeper. When you optically zoom, you're placing the same amount of data into the same frame.

The best way to avoid even thinking about digital zoom is to shoot in the highest quality. I was worried about accidentally using digital zoom, but it’s not available at the four megapixel level. Logically enough, the lower quality that you shoot, the more the camera will allow you to degrade the photo further with digital zoom. Get closer!

One last time: You might as well shoot at highest quality. Remember your aunt. When you zoom as close as you can and take the photo at the highest quality 4 megapixel setting, you will find that same crappy digital zoom image down deep at its center. All you do with digital zoom is throw away the context. Digital zoom is a lie. It’s just the cropped center of a larger photo. Take the best optical photo you can. Do your digital zooming in Photoshop or MS Picture It or your Desktop publishing program.

...stepping off of soapbox...

CONNECTION WITH THE COMPUTER
The manual tells you not to connect the USB to the computer until you’ve installed the software. I connected this camera to my wife’s XP laptop, which never even tasted the Fuji disc and it immediately showed her the photos that were in the camera. Ahem, take my advice, XP users. Don’t install the software. XP doesn’t need Fuji’s software to get photos from your camera. Why complicate things?

You can use the Camera wizard or you can just navigate your S3100 like a hard drive. It shows up as a pretty fast flash drive. I say “navigate” because it stores the photos three directories deep. You can open and view files while they are still in the camera. If you re-save to the camera, it might not be able to read the files correctly. But the cool thing is that in a pinch, you can use your camera as a flash drive. Drop that game into the camera and port it to the party.

The Fuji CD was mal-programmed. It tries to install two things at once and tries to reboot before the Fuji’s software is installed. I never actually saw it. What’s more, it tries to install that absolutely Jurassic and useless ATI media center onto your computer. I uninstalled that junk in 2001. It seemed unusually retro then. It kept trying to install it when I rebooted after uninstalling it. Somehow that nightmare is over now.

The camera keeps track of how many photos you’ve taken. With the naming convention it uses, it may roll over at 10,000 photos.

It connects directly to a printer and can be used as a web camera. I could be wrong but it apparently operates only as a slave when connected to anything. You have to unplug it from the computer before you can set up the USB to be used for another function.