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My Puke-on-Command Camera
As you can tell from galleries like this one, I'm really not much of a photographer. But I do appreciate a good camera. So I was psyched when the folks at Fuji sent me a new S6000fd to try out on my trip to Iraq. Too bad I really couldn't make better use of the thing. Which I'm not sure was entirely my fault -- despite my long-standing ridership on photography's short bus.
For example, one day in Fallujah, I jumped out of a Humvee, to snap a couple of shots of a food run that wasn't exactly playing out according to plan. The batteries all spilled to the floor of the truck. So I spent a couple of minutes scooping up Duracells, instead of documenting what went down. The same thing happened over and over again, during my month in Iraq: any time I really wanted a picture, the batteries would come flying out of the camera. Not even a heavy application of duct tape could keep this alkaline equivalent of projectile vomiting from happening. It's like the camera was South Park's Stan, and there was always a cute girl on the playground.
Even harder to handle was the camera's supposed "face detection" technology, which -- in theory -- was supposed to help me to focus in on a soldier's mug, rather than the muzzle of his gun. But the algorithm only seemed to click in at the most random of moments. No amount of button-mashing or manual-consulting seemed to be able to produce a repeatable effect: sometimes it was mug, sometimes it was muzzle.
The flash was also a mystery. I've never had major issues getting lighting right with my wife's Cannon Digital Rebel XT, but with this one... As they say in Iraq, oy vey. My choices seemed to be over-dark and overexposed.
The S6000 had its good moments, though. With a 10.7X optical zoom, it allowed me to stick my nose into action from a good distance away. It was easy to hold. And the advanced settings were simple-to-configure. I'm sure a real photographer could've taken advantage.
As you can tell from galleries like this one, I'm really not much of a photographer. But I do appreciate a good camera. So I was psyched when the folks at Fuji sent me a new S6000fd to try out on my trip to Iraq. Too bad I really couldn't make better use of the thing. Which I'm not sure was entirely my fault -- despite my long-standing ridership on photography's short bus.
For example, one day in Fallujah, I jumped out of a Humvee, to snap a couple of shots of a food run that wasn't exactly playing out according to plan. The batteries all spilled to the floor of the truck. So I spent a couple of minutes scooping up Duracells, instead of documenting what went down. The same thing happened over and over again, during my month in Iraq: any time I really wanted a picture, the batteries would come flying out of the camera. Not even a heavy application of duct tape could keep this alkaline equivalent of projectile vomiting from happening. It's like the camera was South Park's Stan, and there was always a cute girl on the playground.
Even harder to handle was the camera's supposed "face detection" technology, which -- in theory -- was supposed to help me to focus in on a soldier's mug, rather than the muzzle of his gun. But the algorithm only seemed to click in at the most random of moments. No amount of button-mashing or manual-consulting seemed to be able to produce a repeatable effect: sometimes it was mug, sometimes it was muzzle.
The flash was also a mystery. I've never had major issues getting lighting right with my wife's Cannon Digital Rebel XT, but with this one... As they say in Iraq, oy vey. My choices seemed to be over-dark and overexposed.
The S6000 had its good moments, though. With a 10.7X optical zoom, it allowed me to stick my nose into action from a good distance away. It was easy to hold. And the advanced settings were simple-to-configure. I'm sure a real photographer could've taken advantage.
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