I made up my mind to always carry a camera after that incident and the Fuji F700 was small and light enough to accompany everywhere for 3 years, until it died in autumn 2007. Money was tight, since I have no job, so I looked for a cheap replacement. Tesco sell Technika cameras, which are really very cheap, so I thought I'd try the Technika SA-H366 a 10 megapixel model. The results were frankly appalling, so I soon returned it and upgraded to a Samsung S85 (N.B. the Samsung D85 is identical, except that it's black, instead of silver).
This has been my constant companion for the last 10 months, but it failed to close last week, so it was back to Tesco. The camera was still within Tesco's 1 year warranty, but no longer stocked, so they offered me a replacement.
I searched the meagre details displayed in store and eventually settled for the Samsung L100. This is available in Black, Silver and Pink, needless to say I did not chose pink.
It's a nice little camera, about the size of a packet of cigarettes, with many good features. Face detection, digital image stabiliser (anti-shake) and a good ISO range from 100 - 1600.
I thought that it was a bit too small, even though I don't have very big hands. It was easy to use, with a similar menu layout to the S85.
The aluminium body meant that felt solid despite its small size, but I was really unimpressed by the picture quality. I always set digital cameras to their highest quality setting. There's no point skimping, as memory cards are so cheap.
I think that the processor was too aggressive when creating the jpeg, or the lens is just not good enough for the 8 megapixel chip.
Here's an example photo:
And this is a 100% crop (I viewed the image at 100%, so that I could see the actual pixels recorded by the camera, then cut this out of the image and saved it).
To me it looks like an artist has lost his patience and painted some of the picture with a very large brush.
