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“This is my third digital camera. As an opportunistic...”

Written on: 07/02/2003 by Jandy. (1 review written)

Good Points
Handbag size, lens has cover protection, great video and sound capture

Bad Points
Fiddly rocker button for menu selection and moving through images. Quality of zoomed images has not been up to expectations Proprietary battery

General Comments
This is my third digital camera. As an opportunistic photographer I wanted something I could carry in my handbag, whip out and take a great shot quickly. The F601 does that. I also bought the cradle and a spare battery. The cradle makes file transfer easy and also charges the battery. In six months I only needed the spare once. Despite having pre-charged it, it was flat a week later when I need it. I would advise travelling with the cradle in your luggage. I miss being able to use AAAs as I did in my previous camera. The F601 takes great video and sound. However, the .avi format used is not recognised by the big name video editing software (Premier)and I had to find an intermediary program to resave the video before I could import it. I also got caught by the innocent mistake of turning my camera sideways for a portrait view video. On downloading, it was lying on its side and simple rotate does not work on .avi! Another intermediary program had to be found to perform the rotate. So far I've found the optical zoom disappointing. Pictures have a grainy look to them. However, the close up mode is great - once you've worked out your optimal distances. The rocker button on the back which is used for menu selection and moving through images took a lot of getting used to and I still don't like it. Handing the camera over to friends to cycle through images is a nightmare as they invariably bring up the menu by mistake and in one case, erased all the pictures.
Despite the negatives, I do love the camera. Easy to use and great photos in auto mode.