You have already heard me wax eloquent about my other Christmas gift – my precious, coveted Zune, which has met and exceeded all expectations (Zune Passes ROCK, Y’all – all the music you can download for $14.99 a month).  Well, as they say “And that’s not all…”

I got another gift from my husband for Christmas, ripped straight off my wishlist:

Just like my new Zune, the Finepix Z10 was one of those purely luxury wishes.  I have a perfectly functional Nikon D50 Digital SLR, that takes pictures of a quality more professional than I have any right to expect.  That’s my serious camera.  But I have been looking around in the electronics departments and browsing Amazon for a “doting mother camera”; a camera to carry in my pocket or purse (in the few instances where I actually carry one) and whip out when my son does something irresistably cute that I need to record for posterity.  Which means, something I can pretty much carry constantly in my hand.  The Nikon is a wee bit on the bulky and conspicuous side.

I so very much wanted to love this camera.  It’s cute.  It’s colorful.  It’s little.  However, tragically, it failed one of the other little requirements I had for a snapshot camera.  It has to actually take pictures.

Now, I am not talking candidates for National Geographic, here.   I am thinking more along the lines of 4 by 6 snaps for his baby book.  My expectations were not high.  But good mother of Pete, the pictures were so bad it was painful.  I have taken better pics with my mobile phone.  Noisy, grainy, with poor color – I would post an example, but I would be embarrassed to have it on my blog.  I tried, really I did.  I tried every setting imaginable, because the sheer cuteness factor was REALLY high.  But in the end, I am just not a flash-over-substance kind of gal.

Back to Amazon it went.  And kudos to Amazon’s customer service.  Because the quality was not up to my expectations (not that they MAKE the camera, mind you), they paid the return shipping.  And for a little smidgen more than the return price, I replaced the Fuji with this:

Now the picture does not do this justice.   This is a little pixie of a camera, barely larger than a deck of cards.  What it loses in sexiness, it more than makes up for by the amazing pictures that it takes.  The color depth is beautiful, and the graininess usually found in ultracompact snapshot digital images is missing.  It’s not quite up to the quality of my SLR, but it’s more than respectable.  And certainly sufficient for those little slices of Harry-life that I don’t ever want to miss.