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Old December 28th 05, 01:27 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
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Default Moving on from Fuji A310 ,,,

wrote:
My first digital point-and-click was a Fuji Finepix A310. Since it
died, I am stuck with the XD cards, so looking for an up-to-date
equivalent,


Just because you have a pocketful of XD cards, don't think you have to
stick with that format. Media costs pittance these days, especially in
relation to the cost of a new camera. Don't be afraid to chuck those XD
cards out and buy whatever media your new camera uses.

I am a bit confused about the spec. The A310 claims 6 m pixels, and
certainly creates large enough files, but also claims only 3.1 m
effective pixels.


Effective pixels is the key factor. Some manufacturers program the
camera to electronically "guess" the values of more pixels and those are
inserted into the image. A dubious practice, and a good reason for
ignoring brands that do it IMHO.

The A350, on the other hand, claims only 5.2 m
pixels, but also 5.2 m effective pixels.


"Sensor size" is normally the same as "effective pixels" but they
occasionally differ when a manufacturer uses a sensor that is slightly
too big for the lens to focus on, or where the sensor is slightly
obscured in some way. Under these circumstances a 5MP sensor might only
provide 4.8 effective MP. That's not so bad, but if it's quoted,
effective pixels is the figure to look at.

I am guessing that the "fine" mode on the A350 might be the same kind
of electronic trickery that takes 3.1 m to 6 m pixels on the A310, but
that they've stopped claiming the equivalent higher figure in more
recent specifications.


"fine" or "high quality" mode refers to how much data is thrown away
during the compression of an image in order to reduce the size of the
photo on the storage media or computer hard disk. All sensible people
put the setting in highest quality mode and leave it there. If you run
out of storage space on your media cards, buy more media.

I'm not sure quite what Fuji are claiming, or what they are producing.
The fact they are trying to blind you with marketing bull**** that makes
their 3.1MP camera look like it produces 6MP images would make me not
consider their products further.

Have a look at the camera side-by-side comparison feature on
http://www.dpreview.com/.