My camera has bit the dust – literally and metaphorically.  Unfortunately, it’s had too many falls from a height onto a hard tiled floor which has bent the external case a bit and made picture taking inoperative.  Picture viewing is okay but everything connected with the “Go” button and the option mode selector on top is defunct.

So if anyone wants an old camera to pull apart, maybe for spares, then let me know! You can have it for the postage.

You’ll need a teeny-weeny tricorn type of screwdriver as well – some screws are posidrive, but others are this three-pronged affair.  I thought I’d check if something was fixable, like a circuit board coming adrift, say – but the weird screws have put me off.

I can’t give you a picture – but there’s a definite gap and looseness on the case edge.

As an afterthought, during WW2, my dad got a Bausch and Lomb pair of naval binoculars (7 x 50), which still work even now.  The naval test was that the binoculars had to survive a drop from 6 feet onto a hard steel deck!

Well the Fuji FinePix F30 optics seem to have survived the physical fall, but the electronics or switches controlling them haven’t!  The lens still expands, the autofocus still clicks and whirrs, and the motorised zoom still works.

But now point and click – I’m bereft!  I always seem to take what I treasure for granted and hoard the rubbish.  It’s a failing, I know.

Next camera: maybe the Fuji FinePix F100fd?  Any ideas anyone…

Badger closeup

I really liked the F30.  If I hadn’t had that camera there is no way I’d have got the picture of the local badger.

In my view, it’s (paradoxically) single failing was that the battery lasted for too long before recharge.  When the time came, I’d usually have forgotten where I’d left the charger, and it was so long in the past when I’d last done it that I’d blow a gasket looking for it!

Points to make:

• The F100fd has a bit more zoom and a bit more low-light level capability.
• But it’s a few mm bigger all round which makes it harder to squeeze into my pocket.
• And it’s battery only lasts half the time of the F30.
• It’s got less functionality over shutter and aperture choice and control – although to be fair, I never used the options that much on the F30 – but it was fun to experiment.

What I want is a neat, fast, intensely portable camera to trap any moment as accurately as possible.  These things are all mutually exclusive compromises – hence my next purchase dilemma.

I need:

• A camera that is always available – hence the need for long battery life and plenty of storage space.
• A camera that takes shots in great detail, so that the subject doesn’t necessarily need proper centring, as cropping can be used afterwards.
• A camera that is fast, to trap rapidly occurring events and capable of getting reasonable results whatever the lighting – the F30 was really good at this.

The F100fd is there;  but it’s a lot of dosh to waste on a lemon if I’m wrong.  Some good comparative reviews by Jeff Keller are here for the F30 and here for the F100fd.  I’m tempted to hunt down another F30/F31fd!  The barrel distortion is a lot worse I think with the F100fd looking at the reviews, plus the other cons I mentioned above..

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