The Prairie Oyster

Before you ring up and complain, the title of the piece was chosen because I am going to try to use an underwater camera out on the Alberta plains - not a place known for fish, corals, or oysters. Just another scale model flight of fancy. But there is a core of good sense to it. I've just come back from a week away photographing cars and tourist sights in Melbourne. I hauled a mirror-less camera about with a modest zoom lens attached...and was very pleased with the results. No prizes for guessing which maker's camera...Pleased with the results which will grace my other columns, but still sometimes a little nonplussed by the size and shape of a standard camera. The Fujifilm X series are small enough, but I wondered if their compact waterproof cameras would be an even smaller viable alternative. So I checked one out, charged the battery, and clapped in an old 4Gb card. The basic body of the Fujifilm XP120 is gorgeous - you can get a wide variety of colours. It's got the funny lens-on-the-top shape of many of the underwater cameras and seems to be really intended for a one-handed operation. I did not dunk it - there are limits to what you can do when testing shop stock - but I did note that they advertise it as proof down to 20 metres. I also did not throw it on the floor, but apparently the company is confident that it could survive a 1.75 metre shock. By all means buy one and give it a go... The mechanism to seal the battery and card space is the standard folding door with rubber seal. The lock requires two actions for permission to open. The finger controls are pretty standard but there is a very sturdy lanyard ring to encourage you to use a wrist strap. The external performance is average for a small sensor camera. I should be satisfied with it for postcard-sized prints or images, but would not expect large ones. It was possible to capture flat artwork on a wall in dim conditions, so you could actually use it for museum memories if you didn't want to buy a catalog. I chose to use it to capture the new station hack - A De Havilland Puss Moth - at RCAF Wet Dog. The odd position of the lens is a real boon for model photography - you can position it so much closer to the baseboard to get it into a scale position. The station is 1:72 - 1:76 so you really need to be flat to get under the wing of the Moth. unfortunately no flash sync, so it is all done with hot lights. The aperture was chosen by the camera in P mode - I should have insisted on A mode and tried for a smaller one. As it was, it was easy enough to hand hold if I turned the thing upside down. ISO was wildly high. It doesn't have the detail of a larger sensor camera - and contains more noise - but the overall effect is pleasing and the close-focusing distance is all you could want. Even the lettering on the CPR signage came out.