kristian's blog

i get this question all the time. in fact years ago i actually used to sell film and digital cameras at both ritz camera and best buy. believe it or not, the best digital cameras out there aren’t always the ones that sell the best.

i could go into a long rant all day long on what the best one is, but i’ll cut to the chase first and then explain a little. if you want the point-n-shoot camera that will give you the best quality images in the widest variety of situations, the camera you want is the FujiFilm F31fd (sometimes just called the F31).

its the one i own, and many many pro photogs choose it too. unfortunately the chances that you’ll find it at a local store are extremely slim so online is your best bet at places like Beach Camera or eBay. this model is getting hard to find because its being replaced with the F40 and F50, but sadly, they simply are not as good as the F31.

why? first off, forget megapixels… if you’ve got 5 or 6 megapixels, thats plenty. its not the AMOUNT of megapixels you have, its the QUALITY of those pixels that really matters. [insert sexual innuendo here] but seriously, once when i was working in the photo lab at best buy years ago, Gateway Computers decided to get out of the digital camera biz. so best buy bought a bunch of the cameras they were trying to sell. Gateway, like many other companies, doesn’t make digital cameras, they simply had some cheap chinese company make some cameras and slap the Gateway name on it. these cameras were 5 megapixel cameras selling for $99. they weren’t even worth that much, the photos it produced were SO bad… and it had nothing to do with the megapixel count.

Fuji is generally known within the pro community as being a company that makes great camera sensors. in fact most companies don’t make the digital camera sensors for little digital cameras (most are actually made by sony) and most manufacturers try to cram in as many megapixels into the darn thing as you can. unfortunately, there’s a big tradeoff, and that tradeoff is image quality and the ability to shoot at HIGH ISO ranges. ever take an indoors with flash and the photo looks like you’re in a dark cavern? it looks terrible doesn’t it. it looks that way because the camera’s sensor isn’t sensitive enough to be able to capture detail at low light levels. when i shoot weddings my professional equipment and lenses is acutely able to do this because everything is much bigger (simple way of describing it), but its much harder to achieve with small cameras.

the fuji f31fd has an absolutely amazing ability to shoot at high ISO’s (high sensitivities) for such a small camera. it will allow you to take images photos both with and without flash in situations where there is less than bright light. what does this do for you? it gives you GREAT LOOKING, natural looking photos where it doesn’t look like a cavern.

now someone might say, “but this camera has IMAGE STABILIZATION which is just as good or better!”. the answer to that is: it depends…. image stabilization is GREAT, just as long as your subject isn’t moving. seriously. as long as you are photographing something that IS NOT moving, then image stabilization is great. IS (image stabilization) doesn’t stabilize the movement of your subject, it stabilizes the movement of your hand when your camera has to use a super slow shutter speed because its sensor isn’t sensitive enough to capture the image fast enough.

now a lot of point-n-shoot cameras these days STATE that they can shoot at high iso/sensitivities, but in reality the quality is so poor that they are really unusable. honestly, my very best recommendation for anyone is to snap up this camera before it becomes too hard to find at all.

lastly, if you absolutely can’t find this camera or simply want something different, a few companies that make pretty good stuff are canon, sony and panasonic. i’d shy away from the super high megapixel models though as quality often suffers.

if you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments!!