All Right. Who Invited the Snowman?

I'm not entirely certain why, but a couple of our Christmas decorations hung around past Easter last year. This ole snowman's part scarecrow, and so ugly you can't help but like 'im.

If you look closely, you can see evidence of the camera's damaged sensor (lens?) near the pic's upper right corner.

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Finally I spent some time experimenting with this camera's controls and figuring out why I was having such difficulty getting satisfactory images. Fundamentally it's a disconnect between the designer's objectives and the way I want to use a pocket camera. We weren't a good match.

I bought this camera to replace a FujiFilm F10 I'd simply worn out. The F200EXR was a successor occupying the same slot of the FujiFilm product line, and at first glance seemed a lot like the camera I was replacing--much the same size, and sporting a similar menu system. It didn't take me long to decide I'd made a mistake.

The camera's got a fully automatic mode--that's the EXR in its name--which is adequate, and likely many users just let the camera make all of the decisions and were satisfied with the results. I don't work like that.

Which leads to my main problem with this device: Generally speaking my default camera shooting mode is aperture priority. With this camera changing the aperture is quite simply a pain, involving mislabeled buttons (the EV control as an aperture selector makes sort of an abstract sense, but it's hardly obvious) and unexpectedly difficult selection methods. I want control of my photographs; I don't want to fight the camera for that control.

Anyway, a year ago today I sat down to reacquaint myself with all of these things. I'd continue to have difficulties--as we'll see in a couple days--but at least I'd know what I was doing wrong.

I have other complaints about this camera, by the way. The most annoying is that the F200EXR doesn't work well as a true pocket camera, as it's far too easy to turn the camera on by accident. Other reviewers have expressed concerns about the camera's color rendition--which is actually just fine, but un-Fuji-like. And not a concern for this black and white project.

It's certainly fair to say my problems with this camera are more my expectations than the camera's capabilities. Knowing that doesn't help at all.

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My 366 Snaps photo was of our wine rack, and the tea boxes Joan's stored behind it. I notice one of us had destroyed the wire basket/wrapper encasing the Coppola Claret, but hadn't opened the bottle. Probably there's a story there, but I've forgot it.

My February 24 outtake was similar. I'm not sure either's better.

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This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps.

Number of project photos taken: 32
Title of "roll:" Around Home, Around Mulliken
Other photos taken on 4/10/2012: The daily flower census--again with the V1--consisted of 30 pix, mostly of apple blossoms. We had lots of apple blossoms last spring, but a late freeze did in the apples. (Not actually late, of course; the real issue was that the blossoms were early.)