Fuji Finepix S5800

Well, I’ve had my ‘new’ Fuji Finepix S5800 camera for a little while now and played with it a bit. I’ve come to the conclusion that it serves a completely different purpose to my trusty little Finepix F700. I’m also very glad that I didn’t put the F700 on Ebay and sell it because I’m still carrying it in my handbag … something that I definitely can’t do with the S5800!

On the other hand, the S5800 has the 10x optical zoom and the macro/super macro features that I particularly wanted. I take quite a lot of close-up photos of my plants and this is where the bigger camera really comes into its own. The wider range of pre-sets for things like landscape, fireworks, snow etc are pretty useful too but I really need to explore the manual settings on the camera. For some reason, it seems to struggle with high contrast - a bright background and a darker subject. Things end up looking washed out or poorly contrasted. This is something I need to work on.

I’m also having real difficulty adjusting to the size and bulk of the S5800 over the slim oblong shape of the F700. While it does feel solid and comfortable in my small hands (I was very wary of large cameras for that reason), I’m always having to be extra careful in case I drop it. It’s not as easy to grab in a hurry if there’s a good shot. It’s much better when there’s time to compose and set up the shot properly.

I got a proper bag for it but the camera, spare batteries, battery charger, cables and manual makes it rather a bulky and heavy addition to carry around if you’ve already got a handbag in tow.

I need to spend more time with this camera and learn how to use it properly.

A New Year

Well, it’s been a long time since I updated my T189 blog but I have a few minutes spare this evening

I did save up my September birthday money and finally bought myself the Fuji Finepix S5800 digital camera together with a 2Gb SD card and a Tamrac bag. Christmas brought a travel charger set together with four 2700Mh rechargeable batteries so I can keep the camera ‘well fed’.

It’s a really nice camera and I’m glad I bought it. But I haven’t had much opportunity to get ’serious’ with it since I actually got it I did take it on a short break to Lisbon in Portugal in December and took about 200 pictures with it. I’ll try and post some on Flickr soon.

Of course, after the compact, relatively lightweight Fuji Finepix F700, the S5800 feels both bulky and heavy (the latter due mainly to four AA batteries instead of an internal rechargeable cell). But it suits my small hands and the controls are pretty intuitive after getting used to the way Fuji organises things with the previous camera.

I’ve also got so used to the small F700 living in my handbag, available to whip out at a moment’s notice and snap a quick shot, that the more ‘prominent’ S5800 feels much more conspicuous. I’m not overly keen on wearing it around my neck on the supplied strap but said strap isn’t really long enough to sling over one shoulder so I can carry the camera on the opposite hip.

I hope everyone who reads this blog had a merry Christmas and a pleasant New Year - I know I did!

Some Images from the ’summer’

While I’m still saving up and lusting after the Fujifilm S5800 (as explained in the previous post) I’ve still been using my trusty little F700 to take photos this ’summer’. Actually, the islands have been very fortunate and had much better weather than the mainland. Even when the rain was pouring down and the floods were rising on the mainland, we were having our rain at night and then the clearance came along at about 11am - visitors had a leisurely breakfast and lazed around until the weather improved before going out.

So, here are some photos I took:

First, a red hot poker, but this is the bigger, fatter, autumn-flowering Kniphofia rooperi.

This is a close up from underneath of one of the flower spikes on our yucca

This one is a fluke shot of a housemartin returning to one of the nests under the eaves of our house

And this is the beautiful and unusual flower of Stapelia variegata - a small variety of Carrion Flower

I hope you like the photos. I tend to be much more ‘picky’ about images since I took T189 but I’m still not a skilled user of Elements despite all the work we did with it. Cropping, sharpening, levels and straightening tend to be my stock tools.

Now I must go … we’re out to dinner with friends this evening and I don’t know WHAT to wear!!!

Quandrary!

Oh Fuji, what have you done???

Thrown a spanner in my works, that’s for sure *sigh*

I was almost settled on the S5600 over the S5700 when I found that there was a brand new S5XXX camera just released - the Fujifilm Finepix S5800 which is SOOOO tempting! It’s supposed to be available from October 2007 but the first ones are now appearing on Ebay and a seller has it for sale on Amazon as well.

It’s around the £150 mark at the moment but I’m waiting to see what price it will be from Amazon itself a/. because it will be post free and b/. I do value Amazon’s customer service. I bought an Archos Gmini MP3 player last year and it went wrong within a week - I was able to print out a personalised returns label from the Amazon site, send the faulty player back and subsequently received a brand new one in less than ten days.

So, not surprisingly, I’ve put my new camera plans on hold for a little while so I can save up the extra cash to get the S5800

Not feeling QUITE so down :-)

My disappointment at my T189 marks is now mellowing and it’s certainly NOT going to stop me taking photographs! *lol*

Having a Fuji camera, I signed up with the MyFuji website and registered my camera. They send monthly emails and stuff, run competitions and forums, have useful Photography tips etc. Recently I received an email offering a 15% discount on Fuji refurbished cameras It’s valid to the end of the month and I have some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket so what to buy? I think a bridge camera would be the best option and, hopefully, nothing too bulky or heavy that would make it difficult to carry around. So …

Fuji Finepix S5600 Zoom

OR

Fuji Finepix S5700 Zoom

(Sorry Georgy, I really can’t afford a proper DSLR - in fact, I think it would be wasted on me to be honest!)

Decisions …. decisions …. decisions ….

Feeling a bit down …

I’ve had to think very long and hard about writing this blog post because I definitely have some conflicting feelings about my T189 results.

The OES (Overall Examinable Component) mark I received for the ECA was 70/100 which was rather disappointing because I was really hoping to get a mark between 75 and 85. From feedback received on OpenStudio and on Flickr, I got the impression that my images were good and some were very good so only to get ‘Achieved’ for the visual and technical marks on my ECA panel was a bit of a let-down

I know I didn’t master some of the more involved techniques in Elements 5 and that seems to have impacted on my Technical Awareness mark but I simply didn’t have the extra hours required to invest in such a complex program on top of the course work and the time for photo assignments. I also use a trackball due to RSI which is hardly an ideal tool for delicate image editing and I didn’t have spare cash to buy a graphics tablet

So here are my marks:

Part 1a - Visual Awareness - Achieved
Your images showed a satisfactory level of visual awareness. Your panel of images had one or two images with good visual impact and showed some evidence of imagination and creativity. Some of your images communicated their intention clearly and made use of ideas taught in the course about framing, lighting, and decisive moments. About half of the images in your panel could be improved upon and the best way to develop your visual awareness is to keep taking pictures and looking at them critically.

Part 1b - Technical Awareness - Achieved
Your panel of images demonstrates a reasonable level of technical skill. Several of your images are appropriately exposed and sharp, and demonstrate your control of the camera. If you have edited your images then your mark may reflect problems with the colour, pixelation, or other digital artefacts. A common problem for beginners to photography is the over-saturation and over-sharpening of images. The technical standard that you have reached is satisfactory and with practice your technical skill will improve. You may find it helpful to review the course and think about how your images could be improved from a technical point of view.

Part 2 - Written Component - Well Achieved
Your answers to the written component of the ECA show a sound understanding of photographic techniques and aesthetic considerations. You have written appropriately about your images and used some of the terms introduced in the course, and demonstrated a developing understanding.

Since my next course is about to start and my course materials will probably be arriving tomorrow, I’m going to put T189 away for now and just continue snapping away with my little compact camera. I’m not even sure if it’s worth investing in a new camera so I may put that idea on the back burner for a while. I did enjoy T189 and I did enjoy taking photographs for the assignments and ECA, I did get a pass after all and it’s not a bad one, but somehow I feel rather flat and disillusioned today … sorry, but that is honestly how I feel right now. Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow - it is my birthday after all

Goodnight folks.

Moving onwards and upwards

Today, we got up at the unearthly hour of 5.15am on the final leg of our journey home, having delivered daughter safely to college up in Leicestershire over the weekend, and arrived back safely just before lunch. Hubby fired up the computer to do some printing and then I downloaded all the (mostly) junk emails before checking in on my OU First Class desktop. I have to admit that it came as a bit of a shock when I double clicked on T189 Feedback which sported a red flag only to be told that I’m not allowed to perform that function

So I dashed over to my StudentHome page to see if any results were there … it appeared not. I’m not exactly sure when the T189 results will be released but it’s possible that the OU is being extra-scrupulous with the marking since it is the first presentation of the course and they want to set an effective benchmark for future presentations. However, on checking a little later, I found the following announcement on my T189 course details page:

Your course result should be available by Thursday 13 September 2007

So it’s not long to wait now for students of the first presentation of T189!

I confess I’ve not taken that many photographs this summer, apart from ones of our daughter, so I really need to get going again now that autumn is here. There’s that faint bonfire-smoky tang to the air that heralds the ’season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ and the spiders are out in force, spinning their webs across anything available. It also heralds the fast approaching excitement of my next course - A215: Creative Writing, a sixty point Level Two course, and a fascinating challenge.

So good luck to all T189-ers for fantastic results

The End is Near

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

As the title of this blogpost says, it’s nearly all over now for the first presentation of T189

The announcement has appeared on my StudentHome page saying that the course website will be closing on August 31st and I imagine that we will lose access to OpenStudio at around the same time. So I went into OS and systematically saved each ‘week’ page to ensure I would have a record of the images I submitted for each week. Then I deleted each week’s images one after the other so my section of OS is now empty.

After that I went to the T189 website and clicked the link which allows each student to save a webpage containing all the images they’ve submitted to OpenStudio together with the comments made by other students on each one. That was a nice feature introduced in response to student requests so the course team/web developer were obviously listening to us.

The folder I created containing the nine OpenStudio pages with their image thumbnails together with the ‘digest’ version which contains the images at full size (480 pixels was the largest dimension allowed) was a fraction over 4Mb in total so not a huge download. It also means I can keep a good record of my OS contributions and comments for future reference

At the beginning of next month, the OU’s housekeeping department will (metaphorically speaking) be moving into OpenStudio and the website, cleaning and dusting and tidying it up ready for the October intake of new students, all eager and excited at the prospect of studying digital photography for ten weeks Good luck to all of them!

Many ex-T189 students remarked that they are feeling a bit ‘lost’ now that the course has finished. It takes a degree of discipline and dedication to study an Open University course and T189, despite only being a 10 week course, is no exception. Some already have their next course lined up, some were doing other courses alongside T189 and are continuing to study, others (like me) are still undecided and have yet to commit themselves.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blog and, if you decide to take T189, I promise you’ll find it interesting, challenging and inspiring

T189 Message Board open!

Why not visit the T189 Digital Photography Unofficial message board where past, present and prospective students can get together. Ask questions, answer questions, post links to useful or inspirational website or just chat

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

We’d love to see you!

Growing!

Well, it’s just over 24 hours since I last posted on this blog about the new board:

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

and the stats show that the board is definitely growing

Community Time: 17/07/07 16:46

Founded: 14/07/07

* 55 Avg visits per day
* 27 Posts per day
* 56 Posts in last 24 hours

* 217 Total visits
* 106 Total posts
* 28 Total topics
* 16 Total members

which is very gratifying

It’s probably the wrong time of year to launch a new board - summer is notoriously slow in messageboardland - and it may gain new members when the official T189 First Class forums close in about six to eight weeks time. Nevertheless, it’s there for any T189-ers who would like to keep in touch and anyone who is thinking of studying T189 in the future.

It’s also worth popping in to the Flickr group and checking out the discussions:

T189 OpenUni 2007

where students are posting links to their final ECA images. Those I’ve looked at have been fabulous

Now, if I can persuade my daughter that a walk would be a good idea, I hope to be going out in the slightly cooler late afternoon soon with my camera to hand. There’s no guarantee I’ll come back with any shots - she likes to keep moving - but you never know!