All my research paid off!! This camera is GREAT!! Would buy again NO regrets!!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Beautiful, crisp, and vibrant pix! Phenomenal Battery life (2100Mah rechargables)!! Easy to use! Great value!

Cons: Very-VERY slight purple-fringing in FEW of lowlight-pix, nothing that can’t be quickly fixed in digi-darkroom!!

The Bottom Line: 
This camera consistently delivers fabulous pix!! Super easy to use for either point-and-shoot, or full-or-partial/manual function for those professional-pix. Great for beginner or a good everyday camera for the professional!!

Author's Review
You have three different ways to take pix depending on your mood or what you need at the time:
Automatic everything with many preset scenarios
Manual-Partial
Manual-Full
I have one thing to say that impressed the heck out of me and my hubby…I snapped a pic when I was the passenger in a moving vehicle, now that vehicle was winding through back roads at 60Mph , I just pointed the camera towards the drivers side windshield and pushed the button…We were all AMAZED!!! That photo was of trees and since it’s fall you can see all the branches and they were CLEAR AS A BELL!!! No blur!! It looked as though I was standing still when the pic was taken! I then proceeded to snap pix the rest of the way home and I got a ton of great shots of nature and barns and such and never even had to slow down!!!
You really have your choice of how to get the shot! If you're busy like at a birthday party you want the camera to be automatic...But, when you're driving down a country road and come upon a wonderful and beautiful scene it brings out that artistic side...you can make all the fine tuning needed to take that real professional shot!! The menu's are all very well laid out and very easy to use; for the first month I carried the manual with me in my purse along with the camera EVERYWHERE...I never once had to refer to the manual to figure out how to make the camera do what I wanted it to do.
I got a GREAT shot of the full moon one night when we were at the coast and the details were incredible and the picture was so crisp and clear without any hot pixels either!!

When I purchased the camera I also bought a 256mb SD card, and I would tell everyone to do the same. The 16mb card that it came with is completely useless!! I’ve been able to get about 150 pix on that 256mb card all at the best quality setting. I am not one to ever use any other setting than the best, since you never know when you’re going to get a perfect shot and want to enlarge it or just print it to display in a frame. Even my regular “mom” shots need to be good quality since they’ll probably get printed anyway.

I've probably snapped over a thousand pix in the 6 weeks that I've had the camera and I’ve been incredibly impressed with the battery life. I purchased rechargeable 2100Mah batteries and I’ve gone FOREVER before having to change them...In fact I originally bought two sets of rechargeable and only once have I actually killed the batteries!! I'm so paranoid of being in the right place for an awesome pic and having no juice!! I snapped over a hundred flash photos and those batteries were still going strong!!! One set is Sony 2100Mah and one set is Maxell 2100Mah batteries, and recently bought a third set just to have for long trips and these are Energizer; also 2100Mah. All the research I did stated you should not get anything less than 2100 and I would say that they were right on the money!!

I could go on and on about the camera…If you want to contact me with any questions you may have before you make your purchase or if you just want to talk about pix that would be fine too!! Black_n_White_42ograf3_lover@yahoo.com

I could go on and on...I do love this camera and I am very pleased with all of it’s photos...If you email me I can send some example shots in different situations; I also have a website that has just our family photos on it so that’s a great way to see more examples if you want the address just ask!!



Ok, after the above novel you probably think I would have no cons but I do have a few.

The only real con would be that anything you've read about the purple fringing in some night or darker shots is true. I've found it to be very slight and something that is very easy to edit out with PSP8 or Photoshop Elements 2.0. Most of the time I just see the purple fringing in the white glint in peoples eyes where you would normally see "red-eye" and when you put the pic through the "red-eye" removal program it takes it right out!! I also spend a lot of time in the digital-darkroom since I enjoy playing with the photos and most of the time I don't even see the purple until I've got the picture so blown-up that it's just pixels that I'm seeing. Then I come to purple where it doesn't belong and I have to zoom back out to see where it was since I had checked for it before I zoomed in. Even then it's hard to see and I think I only see it then because I'm aware of it and where it is.

OK, now the regular petty stuff...hey I had to come up with some cons or it would be a fair assessment now would it!!

When I was trying to find a camera bad to put it in for protection I was shoving the camera in and out of bags; most of which were too small, I accidentally popped the lens cover off and it hit the floor in the store…Well that was bad…sort of…Bad news was that it broke into three pieces…Good news is that it was three whole pieces. Meaning, there’s the cheapy lens cap, then there’s this slider piece, which is what you gently squeeze to put it on or off, and then the VERY SMALL spring that makes it work. Thankfully I found a bad that I could stuff the strangely shaped camera in and left it in to protect the lens for the ride home, and my hubby came to the rescue and repaired the “broken” cap and it works as good as new. So the cap is cheap and I would love to find a nice rubbery on, but haven’t been able to locate one so far, but I haven’t looked very hard either! Hey, I told you it was petty stuff!!

And the next issue is that sadly the camera is plastic, it would have been nice to see this beauty in real metal, but hey I guess you get what you pay for…right? That it’s plastic hasn’t bothered me at all; at first I thought it would, but since the camera has that old SLR camera feel/shape it fits so well into your hand that you don’t notice that it’s plastic. Talking of the shape, please don’t put your nose up at this odd looking camera…just think for a moment…Those small cameras are VERY hard to hold still enough for low light shots, no handle or grip on most digicams. Then there’s the “hang-on-ability” too…I know, what IS she talking about is what you’re saying right now, you just have nothing to grip with all those little stick in your shirt pocket camera’s and they never feel natural in your hand. If you don’t believe me just go to your local store and try them out, I bet you’ll understand once you try them.

I spent months researching cameras and went back and forth a couple of times and went to stores to try them out and also borrowed friends and families cameras to see what we liked and didn’t like in each one, and when it comes down to it we found that the extra little bit of size and heft enabled us to get the best shots!! Even though the camera is bigger than the credit card size cameras they’re now making, I can still stuff it in my regular size purse; in fact I carry the camera everywhere with me so I never miss a shot!

OK, the last issue is a weird one, and one I would have called them for, but when I checked out the demo camera at the store it did the same thing…When you move the camera back and forth in a rocking type manner the barrel kind of clunks…and by that I mean just a little clunk type feel, nothing major or dramatic. You can take your fingers and grab the barrel itself and it does wiggle a little bit, almost like it wasn’t shimmed properly or something. I’m sure there is some reason that it probably does this, and it really is no biggie, I just didn’t want anyone to get one that didn’t already know of this and freak out thinking they got a bad or broken camera…If someone has a Z1 that DOESN’T do this please email me and I’ll call them to find out what’s up…It’s very slight movement nothing major, I just wanted to mention it, that’s all.