Fuji Finepix 3800 - A Versitle Digital Camera

My digital camera is a hand me down - deemed out of date by its original owner (my son) because it is only a 3 megapixel camera and because it is bulky. First off, 3 megapixels is more than adequate for pictures that are to be displayed on the web. Most PC screens only have a resolution of about 1 megapixel. In addition, this camera has several features that make it desirable. These include:

• It takes AA batteries - so when the battery goes dead it can be easily replaced. NiMh batteries work well in this camera.
• It has dual LCD screens. One on the back, and the other visible in the view finder. So when the one in the back gets broken (the fate of the camera which replaced this one) you can still use the camera.
• Its not all auto point and shoot. It has several manual modes including fixed focus (infinity, portrait, closeup and macro) and fixed Fstop modes. In "night" mode it will take exposures up to 4 seconds.
• It has a wide optical zoom (6X).
• My favorite feature is that it has a lens accessory ring that threads onto the camera body to allow the use of filters, and wide angle or telephoto lense elements. The internal thread size is 55mm. I was able to put on a T ring and mount the camera to a spotting scope and a microscope.

Here is a picture of the fuji mounted to a 15-45X spotting scope.

The lense accessory ring is only plastic, so note the tripod mounting bracket made up out of scrap aluminum. The bracket allows for more balanced mounting on a tripod and (hopefuly) takes the stress off the camera threads. The two photos below are the view out of my living room window with just the camera zoomed all the way out and all the way in.

Note the power plant smoke stack visible just under the bridge. That plant is more than 2 miles away. Here are some shots with the spotting scope:

The first shot is about the best trade off in terms of magnification and clarity. The second is max magnification.

I had a telescope eyepiece adapter that I would like to try with an astronomical telescope some day. In the mean time I tried it with a student microscope. It was not a proper fit and did not allow proper positioning of the eyepiece so that the eyepiece reticule was out of focus. However, I was somewhat surpirsed that I was able to get some decent images at pretty high magnification, without staining.

Here is a picture of staph (puss on a slide):

Here are pictures of cheek cells and onion, again without staining.

I found that by playing with the light I was able to get more detail on the picture than I could see. I was able to get some additional detail by playing with contrast settings in a photo program. Some additional detail could be possbily obtained using colored filters for lighting and playing around with chroma settings in a picture program.

This seems like the makings of a good science fair project. Various methods of image enhancing could be compared to standard stain methods.

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