My Fuji Finepix S5600

My digital camera conked off. The cover that holds the battery fell off, and I can't use it any more.

I went back to my buying principles, and prepared an Excel sheet to choose my next camera. Here's what I was looking for:

• Low-light photography. Flashes are lousy. This effectively means I need ISO control.
• Shutter speed control. I sometimes take really long exposure (3-10s) snaps, and sometimes can't afford the blur (1/250s).
• Long battery life. My current camera consumed batteries like crazy.
• Fast start-up. By the time I got my earlier camera out and it started, it was too late.
• RAW mode. Gives me more control in Photoshop.

I didn't care about:

• megapixels. 2 megapixels (1600x1200) is more than enough, even for my printouts. Takes too much space besides.
• zoom. I need wide-angle more than zoom, really.
• removeable lens. I'm not going to carry around multiple lenses.

After scouting around on Amazon for many months, I found the Fuji Finepix S5600. Not an SLR, but had all the features that I wanted, and at a pretty reasonable price.

Here's a shot I took from my drawing room. This is a 3-second exposure on ISO 100 at F 3.2. The streaks on the road are car headlights.

As a bonus, it had a pretty good (10X) zoom too. See the brightly lit buildings towards the top-left? That's Canary Wharf. Below is a blow-up of those buildings from the same spot I took the above photo from.