A very different one this week! You may notice that most of my photos have a “vibe” to them – some would say that they’re blurry, low quality and crap, but I prefer to seem them as “Warm” and “Aesthetic”…
In mid 2025 I made the move to try and reduce my use of my phone, subscription services, apps and AI. There were loads of reasons – mental health, money, wasting free time on unfulfilling scrolling, a compulsion to spend money on useless toys…
One of the main things I did was remove many of the non-essential apps from my phone and start using purpose-made devices for things like Music, Photos, Games etc… I’ll probably do other posts for my other devices but I wanted to focus on maybe my favourite to use, my camera.
With the point of this exercise to be to try and reduce my spending; I didn’t want to go out and buy a new camera, a new music player and a new games console. Conveniently I had this old digital camera sitting in a draw, not getting used but too good to get rid of.
The Fujifilm Finepix E510 released in 2004, sporting 5.2 megapixels, a 3.2x optical zoom, film emulation and support for fujifilm’s proprietary xD cards (before the universal acceptance of the SD card standard). Mine came with a two absolutely huge cards, the whopping 256mb card I am currently using (which will support about 150 photos) and an absolutely hilarious 56mb card (which will hold a jaw-dropping 30 photos).
Although very well-received in it’s day, using a 22 year old digital camera absolutely comes with some drawbacks. It chews through AA batteries with no rechargeable option (although I do use a rotating cast of rechargeable AA’s), the proprietary cards are small, likely to die at any moment (flash memory only lasts so long!) and are relatively expensive these days with a 256mb card running the same cost as a 16GB Micro SD card. It also hates the slightest movement whilst taking photos, and taking photos can take about 5 seconds if the auto focus isn’t playing ball, leading to very blurry photos.
It does have it’s upsides though! It’s small, it’s light, it doesn’t have an app or a Wi-Fi connection or a subscription, it makes a charming little beep when you turn it on and if you can get the photos to come out sharp, they have an endearing “warmth” to them that reminds me of taking photos on cameras just like this as a kid.
These days I carry this camera around with me in my work bag, along with a DS Lite, a Fiio Music Player and some headphones – and it makes taking photos a much more enjoyable and meaningful experience! I’ll finish up below with some of the nicer photos I’ve taken with the camera since I started using it!
Leave a comment