Low-Light Digicam Lust

In the last few years I’ve really come to enjoy still photography. I’ve been doing video for close to twenty years, and professionally for almost twelve, and yet until a few years ago never really messed with still cameras, much to many people’s suprise. I took up photography to some extent to help improve my video work, by putting more emphasis on composition and technical aspects like exposure, which is relatively easy to control in digital video, but just as difficult to master for artistic results.

I own a couple of film SLR cameras (which can be had really cheap these days) but just a decent compact point-and-shoot digital camera — nothing professional or fancy. I like my digicam because it’s sturdy and is small enough to carry around with me. While it’s great to have a full-featured camera, it’s not worth anything if it’s in a drawer instead of your pocket when a photo-op happens.

I’ve managed to be mostly immune to camera upgrade fever as more sophisticated and higher-resolution digital cams have become available in the last two years. My little pocket digicam does a fine job most of the time with nice results on 4×6 prints and on the web.

But one thing I don’t like about my digicam is its low light performance. I’m not a fan of flash photography, and on top of that the flashes on little digicam are weak and too close to the lens, resulting in rampant red-eye. But if you’re indoors with artificial light, you really can’t get a crisp, sharp picture without the flash.

With mine and most digicams, the sensors just aren’t very sensitive and produce very noisy pics at their highest sensitivities. For instance, most digicams aren’t more sensitive than 400 speed print film, and at that setting typically produce very noisy, grainy pics — much more grainy than you get with cheap 400 speed color film in a cheap film point-and-shoot camera, in fact.

Most digital SLRs do really well at ASA film speed equivalents of 800, or even 1600 up to 3200 — better than most film at that point. But they’re big, bulky and relatively expensive.

The other day, however, I was reading the new issue of Popular Photography, and they had a review for a new Fuji camera, the Finepix F10, whose claim to fame is that it’s optimize to work well in low light. And, according to the review (not yet online) and other reviews I’ve read, it actually works, and is nearly as good as digital SLRs as far as that feature is concerned.

Oh, and how camera lust was sparked. That’s the one feature I’ve been looking for, and it’s finally here, I thought.

At $400 retail, it’s not cheap, but about the same as what I paid for my first digicam when it was new. I also wondered if this was a feature that would take hold, or if the F10 would end up being a one-off anomaly. A camera with one killer feature that didn’t end up sparking demand, and so was never seen again.

And then I stumbled upon Olympus’ new Stylus 800 digital, which also features the ability to take low-light photos (my current cam is the Stylus 300). Maybe this is something that will catch on. There’s only one review so far, but it’s also positive.

If this low-light capability is going to catch on, then I think I can hold out a little while before upgrading, since I won’t have to catch a model before it goes away. It’s good to resist upgrade fever, but a geek can still dream.


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