As a professional journalist who mostly writes, I needed to be able to take photos to accompany my race reports. I've been using film the whole time the digital revolution has invaded my space. Since my bread and butter consisted of words and magazines and newspapers often hired individual photographers to take photos, I didn't want to spend 4-6,000 on a digital SLR camera, but instead opted for my film DSLR. I was looking for a smaller, lightweight setup that could complement my main camera and after a lot of research I settled on this camera. First, I read that photographers whose lives depend on their photos were in love with "the little camera that could do it". The fixed lens achieves the amazing 300mm zoom, which is translated, which is pretty impressive. Lenses with such a zoom usually lose an enormous amount of light, somehow Fuji copes with this problem and takes amazing pictures even at long focal lengths. And they've won an international lens design award to prove it. The camera body looks and feels very similar to a slightly scaled down DSLR mount, so owners of these lenses won't notice any difference. The camera flash is only useful indoors or at closer range outdoors to fill in areas. It does NOT compete with standalone hot shoe flashes designed for SLR setups. There are multiple program modes and you can set Aperture, White Balance, Shutter speed and many other settings to get the desired result or effect. The digital camera has a mode where you can view the exact settings for a specific shot or all settings if you wish. This makes Fujifilm a great learning tool. I learned more from the camera itself than I could have learned in class. Best for beginners or those who don't want to experiment, leave the setting for the program on "P" and let the camera dictate the settings. You can't go wrong with this. The only thing that worries me as a motorcycle racing journalist is the shutter speed and the reset time. The camera takes a decent shot in motion, but in the time the batteries need to take, process and store the image, the next racer is already past me. I was told a higher quality SD card would help somewhat, but it still will never shoot fast like a real SLR. This can be compensated for to a certain extent, but compared to the SLR it is slow in this sense. Every Pro review I've read has said exactly what I'm telling you, this is the BEST in the series." This can be compensated for to a certain extent, but compared to the SLR it is slow in this sense. Every Pro review I've read has said exactly what I'm telling you, this is the BEST in the series." This can be compensated for to a certain extent, but compared to the SLR it is slow in this sense. Every Pro review I've read has said exactly what I'm telling you, this is the BEST in the series."
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