Picture books by Apple Computers (part I)

Wouldn't it be nice to make your own 'picture books' with the same professional layout and physical appearance as those books you own? With a Macintosh and iPhoto you can! Well, okay it's not true professional quality like the books I reviewed here below but it's close as you can get without spending a huge amount by hiring a professional editor and the full printing costs. Take a look how my book came to life...


These digital camera's are quite an invention. You shoot as many pictures as you like and just delete the ones you don't want to keep. When the memory card is full, just move the pictures to your computer and after emptying the memory card the camera is ready for another shoot. The quality of the pictures are improving on a nearly monthly basis. These days consumer oriented 'point-and-shoot' cameras have 4 to 6 megapixels (amount of pixels that form the picture), while professional SLR digital camera's go 8 megapixels and more. According to analog enthusiasts, the digital photography still has a long ways to go in terms of resolution (to get the same quality as a regular 35 mm film, you will need about 15 - 20 megapixels), but for general use these digital camera's are perfect.

I wanted:
* a small camera (fit in my fly vest pocket);
* capable of taking wide angle shots (no need to step backwards to get the whole scene on picture);
* fast ready-to-go time when I turn it on (moments are gone when you have to wait 18 seconds for the camera to get ready...);
* at least 5 megapixels and
* capable of taking just plain good pictures.

After some intensive research on the internet I downsized the list to three camera's: Fujifilm Finepix E550, Canon Powershot S70 and the Ricoh Caplio R2.

The Canon was too slow with getting ready (almost 3 seconds!) as well general use. Slow operation kills the pleasure of taking pictures. The 7.1 megapixels is of course excellent and the 28 mm wide angle mode (max. 3.6x zoom, 100 mm) is great too. The camera does feels very robust though.

The Ricoh has some excellent specifications. Wide angle starts at 28 mm up to a very nice zoom mode (almost 5x) of 135 mm. It's also a very small camera making it perfect to slip it into your shirt pocket. And this little bugger is FAST (less than a second)! It would have a been a real serious contender, but the guy at the shop said that Ricoh's overall quality isn't up to the major camera brands. The rectangular form factor isn't really comfortable holding it either.

So I ended up with the Fujifilm Finepix E550. It's small enough while having a great holding form factor. The wide angle isn't as wide as the other camera's (32.5 mm vs 28 mm), but the overall quality of the camera as well as the pictures it takes makes this camera a very nice camera indeed. The 6 megapixels is fine, the fast start-up (around 1 second) and operation times and the long battery life (it uses regular rechargeable AA batteries so no problems with getting extra batteries) and the nice zoom (130 mm, 4x optical zoom) made the choice easier. It has an interpolation mode where the 6 megapixels is doubled to 12 megapixels. That's great for earth shattering memorable moments (like running into Anna Kournikova while fishing) but it will fill up your memory card really fast.

Okay, so we got a camera. Let's shoot some pictures!