The last year has been one of decluttering and tidying. In that process, I found my first digital camera – the Fujifilm FinePix 6900 Zoom. I think I purchased this around 2002; the camera was released early 2001.
The specifications are interesting, compared with today’s cameras and smartphones. Maximum resolution was 2832 x 2128, producing a 3 megapixel image. ISO ranges were 100, 200 and 400, with aperture sizes from F2.8-3.1. At the time this seemed amazing, but we’ve had better phones than this for years.
Probably the most annoying attribute of the camera was shutter focus time. After clicking the shutter button, a picture could take maybe 1-2 seconds to complete, by which time a moving subject is already out of shot. This meant doing some creative pre-planning on the subjects movements to ensure an image was captured correctly. However, on the positive side, this camera had an eyepiece and rear display, making it great for holiday photos in bright sunlight.
I should mention storage, which was via SmartMedia cards or USB 1.0. The SmartMedia devices I had were a maximum of 128MB (yes megabytes, not gigabytes) and huge by comparison to today’s storage (see the image below). How technology has changed over time.
This camera was a great introduction to digital photography and it will be sad to see it go. However, it’s now 20 years old and way past what I can achieve with any other camera I own. Good times!