Durable & Dunkable

JUST A NOTE ABOUT A TOY

And A Low Cost Tool

we may fish less

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.. It's an "affordable" camera with just a bit better than average images and some features that may appeal to fly fishers. It's the Finepix XP10 by Fuji. You can search the web for the latest prices and reviews, (HERE'S ONE.) Ours was a gift and reportedly cost about $135.00.

.. It's waterproof. (to about 10 feet!) It's dust proof. Impact resistant to about 3 feet or so. Good for temperatures down to 14° F. It will take stills and HD (720p) movies underwater & focus close enough to capture a mayfly.
.. The little devil has features like digital image stabilization, movie editing, and quick blog posting software for YouTube and Facebook. When you're at home it also has face recognition and automatic red eye removal.

.. It even has "target focus" which stays focused on moving targets as long as they stay visible on the 2.7" LCD screen. The 5x zoom is internal and covered by a tough optical glass cover, and the camera sports a 12-megapixel sensor.
.. So, what's not to like? There's no optical viewfinder, marginal color saturation for still pictures & videos, noticeable noise at ISO 400 and above, very noticeable body colors such as: glistening green, (or blue, or black, or pink, or silver bodies - zowie!)

.. For professional bloggers with as much advertising space as content this is not the tool of choice. It's really just an expensive toy.
.. But if you're a fishing guide, a fisher, a family person, or just an average "Joe," this is not a bad gadget to throw into your shirt or jeans pocket and have at the ready for the snapshots that you need on the spur of the moment.
.. We took it for a quick ride up the Gallatin River to a place where there are usually fish to be found. We found some dinkers but they were a bit skittish. We did capture one as we fiddled with the camera. And it does take some fiddling and experimentation.
.. Most of the control buttons are under a waterproof membrane. They are small but not delicate and our fat fingers finally got adjusted to the feel of them.
.. This is not a review, as such. We have neither the technical expertise, nor the experience for that sort of thing. We just grabbed the thing out of the box, (left the instructions at home in typical male fashion,) and dashed up the road to see if it worked. We saw menus that meant nothing to us. We poked buttons that seemed to do nothing. We plunged it into the water and chased fish, (very small fry - check the video below.) The pictures are fine with us, the video is usable for now, (we'll get better  - we hope!) There's a caddis bomber at about one minute.
.. The original image above is enormous, (4,000 x 3,000,) and straight from the camera. Right click on it and open it in a new window. See if it meets your standards for snapshots. The little trout in the video was hiding by the bushes to the left under the trees.

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