… A few weeks a go my previous Fuji Finepix F420, I think it was gave up the ghost, it had been a great camera to me and it didn’t owe my anything at all. Just look at my Flickr page to see some of the awesome shots it took, it’s kind of an icon really to me, most people will remember it as the one that Mr C couldn’t work in Berlin, turned out to be a loose picture card!
So naturally I needed a camera of such good caliber, I didn’t want another Fuji as my Dad’s ‘world’s first digital camera’ also broke down the same week and it proved cheaper to buy a new one than to get the old one repaired in both cases. I am a bit of a gadget man so I know what makes to be weary off and those which come highly commended, I had a look at a few compacts including the Gadget Show’s top compact, the Fuji F31FD which was good but as, in my experience Fuji’s are no good for battery life. Somebody recommended a Nikon coolpix to me so I looked into this for a while, I then decided I wanted a Big Boy of cameras. An SLR.
Basically the difference between an SLR and a digital compact is that an SLR has interchangeable lenses and filters to get different effects. They tend to be a bit larger than compacts and … Read on ->
… a lot heavier. I went on the web and found a good few contenders including Canon’s Eos series, Sony’s SLR and the one I opted for a Nikon 
D40. It was surprisingly light and not too big, which I found with the Canon. Buying an SLR is totally different as you need to buy a ‘body’ (the image chip and main camera unit) and a Lens, which there are hundreds, no, really! I went for a D40 kit which had an auto focus 18-55 mm lens (52mm diameter) Each manufacturer has a different diameter lens to complicate things! The D40 is great piece of kit and has a 3 point focus so you can the shots where the background is blurred and foreground focused. I literally cannot fault it, but if I had to I would say the auto focus is a bit slow but it’s still not a tortoise. The manual focus shutter speed is Ferrari quick and the quality of the image is immense. The D40 is to be recommended to any Novice (not amateur) photographer who wants to get best photos for a decent price.
So what camera did Dad buy? Well he got an Olympus µ (mew) which is a compact camera using XD picture chips like our Fujis (Nikon SLRs use SD) It’s great and I think better than the Fuji Finepix F31FD as I tried loads in John Lewis and Jessops. The only fault being it lacks a viewfinder but I suppose if you are buying a compact most people will only use the LCD anyway so, not really a huge flaw. Unless you can’t see it in a hot country with more light reflection which is to be tested! It has a good shutter speed and a rapid start up time too!! Oh, and a good 3x zoom!
