I never learn

In a fit of madness I got myself yet another camera with horrible reds. The trouble is the bloody things tick all the right boxes on my 'camera for wandering round town with' spec sheet. Except for the way they render various shades of red. First time out with the thing and the reds hit me straight between the eyes as soon as I loaded the files on the PC. After a bit of fiddling I've made a profile which tames them a bit. Today's search for red things to test the profile was fruitless. There was nothing red to be found! I'll give it a few more goes before throwing the camera at a wall.

The main reason for buying the camera was to get a tilty touch-screen. This does work well. Apart from it being too easy to touch the screen accidentally. As the camera has no viewfinder the use of the tilty screen automatically lowers the viewpoint, making it similar to that of a twin lens reflex camera, or any with a waist-level viewfinder, from the days of film. This makes you less obviously photographing when around people.

Reds are easily sorted in black and white. If only I could find a project to justify black and white conversions. Doing them just for the sake of it is a bit naff. Even worse if it's done because 'street is best in black and white'.

The bus station, however, is mostly black and white, so conversions don't lose much, in fact they rather enhance the graphic nature of many photographs taken there. Although sometimes a small touch of colour works too.

One unexpected advantage of a tiny camera, and this one is tiny, is that it could easily be held at arms length as I leaned over a railing to take a couple of shots of the interior of what was the art school where I did my foundation course. The place has been deserted and up for sale for a few years now. A shame.

Or held up high to another window. The windows were very grimy, hence the soft look to the pictures.

The lens I got with the camera is nice and compact, although it does distort a lot at the wide end which isn't a big deal for people pics but not so good for architecture.

The dilemma now is to persevere with this latest small camera and ditch the Fuji, or look elsewhere for the perfect little camera. This one would be fine to take fishing. My fishing compact might be better for taking anywhere. Decisions decisions. So far no camera I've tried has been as easy to use as a DSLR, although teh fishing compact comes close. Maybe forget the quest and stick with one of those great big lumps!

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