Thursday, September 01, 2011

France/Spain 2011 - Day 4, Part 6 - Paris: St Jacques Tower

"A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out." - Samuel Johnson

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France/Spain 2011
Day 4 - 20th March - Paris: St Jacques Tower
(Part 6)

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Street outside Musée des Arts et Métiers

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"Restaurant Chez Shen ?里香" ("Shen's Restaurant ? Inside Fragrant")
At first I thought this was the first Asian Restaurant I'd noticed where the name in Chinese translated to French, but on further thought I'm not so sure

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The hideous Centre Georges Pompidou

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Video game relief & mosaic

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"BUFFET A VOLONTE
NO LIMIT"

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Here are examples of the pictures my Fuji FinePix F300EXR took that I was very unsatisfied by. I will return to this topic at the end of this post.

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"pelouses au repos hivernal du 15/10 au 15/04"
("The grass is taking a winter rest from 15th October to 15th April")
You can lie on the grass half the year!

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St Jacques Tower (16th c.), one of the few remains from Medieval Paris

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Plaque on the tower and its significance for the Pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela (more)

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Looking up

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Statue inside. Wikipedia informs me that it's of Blaise Pascal.

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Tower

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Stitch from my camera. Actually it's not so bad (there is no fishbowl effect unlike my own stitches), but the resolution isn't very good.

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Stitch

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Love knows no barriers
This was very touching. As you can tell they were kissing for a very long time.

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Love in the Time of Spring
3 PDAs in a row?! But then, this is France (see, I'm not joking - it's true!)
And yes, this is the same park where I documented that touching display of love above


Fuji FinePix F300EXR

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Returning to these pictures, even at ISO 100 the pictures seem grainy (almost smudgy)

I'd wanted a Canon Powershot, but at the March IT Fair it'd been sold out, since I'd gone on the last day, and I wasn't willing to shell out more than $200 for the model that was a rung higher.

I'd visited many stores and it was sold out everywhere, since all the stock had been saved for the IT Fair.

A salesman had recommended the Fuji FinePix F300EXR, and he seemed sincere (and more importantly a trustworthy-looking review site online had highly recommended it), so I got it.

It would've been better to test the camera before really using it in the field so I would know its idiosyncracies and how to maximise its features, but I'd bought it only a few days before I'd left. Furthermore, these wouldn't have been real field conditions (i.e. an overseas holiday). Perhaps more importantly, I was lazy to do the necessary testing (I've never bothered doing it).

So, while the preview on the camera's LCD had showed that the pixellation for pictures was acceptable (even on zooming to the lowest level), when I viewed them on my computer it was often... awful (at 100% - 50% is acceptable). I guess you can't get something for nothing, so I should've been wary of fast shutter speeds in low light while in the black box "EXR" mode.

Worse, then the pictures were often not sharp - at 100% many pictures are not sharp and crisp (across a wide range, and even at a fast shutter speed for still objects - it cannot be handshake because I don't have Alzheimer's, and pictures on other cameras I use are good), and some are even quite blocky. Some pictures aren't even in proper focus. The Stitch was especially unreliable and often horrible.

Ironically, I'd gotten a new camera because I'd been unsatisfied with the pictures taken by the Nikon Coolpix S550 I'd been using, but the ones taken with the new camera turned out even worse. In future I'm sticking with Canon.

Fuji: F stands for "Fucked Up"


Someone: fuji is actually alrite
except under low lighting

mebbie u got a bad unit
like me and my casio
everything blur also
if sharp..somehow looks v flat
hard to explain
also got rave reviews
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