Minimalist gear for multimedia

I was encouraged to find on the Multimedia Shooter website that the digital audio recorder recommended was the one I already had. Not only that, but I discovered the point-and-shoot camera I had was a distinct improvement (in my view) over their recommended camera.

In the section on getting started, the tiny Olympus digital voice recorder WS-300M is recommended for recording sound "on the cheap." For a digital recorder no bigger than most mp3 players, the audio quality is impressive. Last year I bought the Olympus WS-320M model with one gig of storage and added a tiny "noise-canceling" directional microphone (Olympus accessory ME52W) that can double as a lapel mic. Other than a problem with this digital recorder being more sensitive to interference than any other recorder I've used, the Olympus gear is the best I've come across for price and portability.

As for the camera, Multimedia Shooter recommends the Canon PowerShot SD500/digital ELPH at about $350. Months ago I bought the much less well marketed Fujifilm FinePix F30 for about $100 less. According to the Steve's Digicams website, the ELPH provides a little more pixel power (7MP compared to 6.3MP), but the F30 offers a far wider ISO range of exposure indices (100-3200 compared to 50-400), true macro capability rather than digital macro, twice the battery life, and even a larger monitor (2.5" compared to 2"), despite the F30 being only very slightly larger than the little ELPH. Of even greater significance to a photojournalist is the lack of aperture- or shutter-priority modes on the ELPH, much less manual control. The F30 has all three.

Although my first attraction to the F30 was its extreme ISO range, it was the design of its controls that endeared this camera to me. I started out in street photography back in the early 70s, making those grainy, off-the-hip grab shots in black and white. (My newspaper work has disciplined me over the years to shoot much more precisely.) Even though righthanded, I can fully operate the F30 with my left hand alone, giving me the kind of free-wheeling sense of discovery I used to enjoy. Setting the mode dial to Anti-blur, the F30 provides a suitably high shutter speed while optimizing the ISO for the lighting. This often results in the use of a higher ISO setting than I'd normally select, but the image quality and color rendition on the F30 are both quite acceptable. As for the inevitable digital noise in images in the ranges of 800 and above, that, too, is almost nostalgic.

I'm Old School. I actually like photojournalism with a little grit.