shipscript's profile

Fujifilm FinePix A205 - Great for Auction Photos!

This may not be the best camera for family photos, but it is an excellent camera for eBay photography and website images. I bought this camera in 2004 to review for my friends on the eBay Photos/HTML help board, where we were discussing the best-for-the-buck cameras for eBay product photos. It's still my eBay camera in 2010. It has all the features you will need at a great price point. eBay auction photos are a mere 1/4 to 1/2 MP, so I use this camera at its LOWEST setting for eBay product photos (1/3 MP or 0.3MP) and they are then downsized for auctions. The important thing to look for in an eBay camera is Macro (closeup) focus. Zoom is not important for product photography and MEGApixels are a waste of disk space for eBay photos. High megapixels are only important if you want quality prints on large sheets of photo paper. You will need to learn 4 things to use this camera for eBay photos: * disable the flash (a lightning bolt with a circle-slash over it.) * closeup macro setting (the little tulip flower symbol) * white balance (a Lightbulb symbol for those yellowish indoor shots, or Sun symbol for the bluish outdoor photos) * EV - exposure compensation (plus and minus numbers to lighten or darken the scene, if your camera's automatic-exposure looks too dark or light.) Armed with those settings, I have taken great photos with this camera in very poor lighting situations. No more worries about those indoor winter shots! Of course, you can set the camera on full auto to get great daylight photos. The downside to this camera is that (1500ma) grocery store batteries won't cut it. You will need higher-amperage (2200ma) alkaline batteries - or better yet, do as I have done and purchase a $20 battery charger and a couple of sets of NiMH rechargeable AA batteries. With two pairs of rechargeables, I can always be charging one set while using the other. You'll save on battery costs in the long run. The camera should come with a memory card, a USB cable, and a CD. You will not need any of the other accessories that are available for the camera. At the camera's lowest setting, you'll get 119 photos on that standard memory card before it's time to download to your computer. If you have a card reader, you won't need the USB cable, and because I have an XP machine, I did not need to install the CD. I could simply plug the camera cable into the USB jack and turn on the camera. Then I could look in MyComputer for the camera drive in the same fashion as looking for a CD drive or floppy drive. After opening the folders in the camera, I am able to highlight the whole group and drag the camera photos to my desktop or MyPictures folder on my computer. The CD also included the Fuji FinePix Viewer software, so I gave it a try. While that software allowed me to rename, rotate, crop, resize, watermark, and compress my photos, I found the software a little odd and foreign to use (maybe it was written for Mac users). Since I already had other image editing software on my computer, I decided not to install it when I moved to a new computer. Instead I use free www.irfanview.com software to edit my images. If you want to see some photos I took, take a look at the review and Quick Start that I wrote years ago for my eBay friends: www.isdntek.com/demo/camera_a205.htm www.isdntek.com/demo/camera_a205_settings.htm If you are buying a camera for eBay photos, you can't go wrong with this camera or any of its upgraded versions (A210 and A330).

Scruffy Utility towels

These thin scruffy towels are exactly what I need for drying my animals and lining pet beds. Importantly, they absorb quickly and dry quickly, and I don't worry about abusing the towels. I've also purchased the hand-towel size as mud towels for shoes and dog feet. The washcloths are ideal as general cleaning rags. I keep a couple in each bath. The scruffy nap is perfect for cleaning sinks, faucets, tubs, kitchen appliances, cars, and more.