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122 of 131 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Update after half a year's experience, April 25, 2004
Now that I've had the camera for several months its seems like a good time for an update, especially given some of the criticisms that have been leveled at the S7000.The short answer is that I still love the camera, even though it's not perfect. The long answer deserves some explanation. I have many years experience with 35mm film, but also many years experience with computers and computer graphics. Even today, film has capabilities that can't be matched with digital cameras, except possibly by cameras beyond the means of most people. On the other hand, digital photography has huge advantages in terms of immediate accessibility, cost per shot, electronic distribution, editing and enhancement, and the ability to control the printing process to get prints that look the way you want them to. My initial path into digital photography was to buy a film scanner and scan 35mm slides, which in some ways still represents the best of both worlds. But it is a time consuming and expensive (on a per shot basis) approach. My move into digital cameras has occurred in two steps. The first was to replace my "little" 35mm camera with a compact digital camera. For recording events and snapshot photography digital cameras became the preferred approach several years ago, and I'm on my second generation compact digital camera. I love being able to go to a family gathering, then go home and do a quick sorting and editing of the pictures, dump them on the web, and e-mail out a URL so everyone can see them while the gathering is still fresh in their minds. Replacing my 35mm SLR is a tougher problem, and one that hasn't been completely solved yet. The biggest issue I have is that the format of available digital sensors means that there are no really wide angle lenses available for reasonably priced digital SLRs. This, more than any other issue, keeps me from buying a digital SLR. I bought the S7000 as a way to get most of what my 35mm SLR does at a reasonable price, while retaining the 35mm SLR, the film in the refrigerator, and the film scanner as a backup until there is a digital SLR that comes close enough to my ultimate requirements that I'm willing to pay the extra money for it. The S7000 is a remarkably capable camera for the price. The wide end of the zoom is restrictive for me, but I have an adaptor and a Raynox 0.66x lens that help. A fast 1GB compact flash card makes it easy to take a lot of pictures at essentially zero marginal cost. It is true that the lack of control over the compression is an occasional annoyance, but the compressed pictures usually come out very well. Then there is the noise issue. There is no question that if you want to blow up the images and look for noise you will find it. For many shots it's not an issue, but for clear skies and a few other situations you can clearly see it. In most cases screen images and prints of modest size won't show unacceptable noise, but there are situations where it will be evident. Note that there are tools available to make the nose less apparent in images, and if you only occasionally make big enlargements they may solve the problem (if it is one) for you. To continue on this issue, if I scan a slide from ten or more years ago I will generally get grain that is more evident than the noise in an S7000 image. Newer film, thanks to the intense rivalry between Kodak and Fuji in the 90s, has noticeably less grain, but it is still there. So it is all a matter of expectations. The S7000 can create images with noise no more evident than the film grain of days not long since past. Yes, for half again as much you can buy a camera with less noise, but is that a reason to criticize the performance of the S7000? The S7000 can create marvelous images at a great price. It doesn't quite match the capabilities of a cameras that cost significantly more, but why should it? I'm delighted with the S7000, and have taken a lot of pictures that I really like with it. I like being able to shoot hundreds of pictures without changing film. The battery draw bugs me a little, but the problem is not that I've ever had to stop while shooting to change batteries. The strange thing is that it draws down batteries while it is turned off, so I have to plan on inserting fresh batteries each day. But that's a small problem when you expect it. I keep up on what's happening in the digital camera world, and I knew when I bought it that it was possible to buy a better camera at a higher price. But, as I alluded to above, I'm waiting for the digital SLR system that gives me everything I want before I make a big investment, and this camera offered pretty much everything available at its price point or even a step or two higher. The one competing camera that intrigues me is the Sony DSC-F828, which has a wider zoom and a four color CCD mask. But it not only costs half again as much, it weighs nearly twice as much as the S7000. So I still think the S7000 is the right camera for me at this time. That doesn't mean that it is the right camera for everyone. But when you compare its strengths and weaknesses it should be clear why many people love it even though, as some critics point out, it certainly isn't perfect. But it is a very capable and fun camera!
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