You can try resetting the camera. But it may also be suffering from condensation, as the camera moves from a cold environment to a warmer one. So I'd also place it in a zip lock with either a few of those silica packets or some uncooked rice to draw out any moisture.

My recommendation is that you invest in a USB memory card reader. Plug your stick into it and your pc will read it as a drive. Then it's a simple drag and drop onto your desktop and you can use any program you want to manage your photos.



Sure beats trying to trouble shoot drivers or buy a USB cable for it. But since you asked, cables4less.com ;P

I think this says it best ...



In more recent years a new metering method has evolved splitting the scene into a number of zones, anything from three upwards, and then comparing the readings from each zone to come up with an exposure to suit the scene as a whole. These have developed to such an extent that some forms of this metering have anything up to 256 zones and take into account the colour from each zone. However, no matter how sophisticated they may be, in the end all they do is 'average' the exposure across the image frame, with perhaps a bias towards certain zones.

It's called IR Simple and basically, it allows you to transfer photographs wirelessly to another IR Simple enabled camera. From the website:



"Share both photo and movie files with other IrSimple-ready cameras and devices. No more fumbling with cables and connections. Just select the photo or movie and send it !"

in order to charge the battery of the camera you have to remove it and charge it in a battery charging dock. it doesn't charge when you are plugged in by usb.

yes. you can change the effects by going to the settings of the camera.

Ok...this IS possible! Here are the steps for you!



1) Click Menu/OK.

2) Find your way to Finepix Color (Close to the bottom!).

3) The letters B&W mean black and White! Click on them, then take a picture...you are sure to mae a work of art!

Why do you think you need an upgrade?

Sure. Check your camera setup settings. There should be one for muting the sounds a camera makes.

Page 86 of your manual states that you can choose to turn off the volume for both shutter and camera controls. IN the setup menu, look for the speaker icon. This is the volume control. Turning it all the way down will mute it because all the way down turns it off.



I agree though, a mute button would be much less of a hassle.

Hi Cowboys - the finepix z20fd has a "museum" mode, where the simple navigation noise, shutter noise, flash, and any other noises are turned off.

The lag has nothing really to do with the megapixel count. It can vary from camera to camera depending on the kind of processing chip it has. Some are faster than others. But there are ways to combat the dreaded shutter lag:



1. Prefocus. Hold down the shutter half way to get a prefocus of the image you're shooting. When it changes, prefocus again. This will speed up your camera's performance during picture taking since it won't have to autofocus before it shoots the shot.



2. Use faster SD cards. Yes, there are faster cards and it does make a difference in writing the image file to the card. This is especially key if you're taking multiple or burst images.



3. Fresher batteries. Use alkalines at least. But I recommend using high energy batteries designed for digital photography. Varta is a good brand. They are usually sold in camera shops, are long lasting (because they are sold in small quantities) put out alot of energy.



4. Pan with the action. You can create some pretty cool shots by panning with your shot, focusing on your subject. This will create the effect of your subject in sharp contrast to the blurry background.



6. Stick with 100-400 ISO. Going higher will cause more noise/grain in your shots, particularly in darker settings.



Doing these, particularly prefocusing and panning with the action will cut your shutter lag by as much as 80%.



As for the Fuji, or any other large megapixel camera, frankly, in the point and shoot realm, more megapixels doesn't mean a better or even faster camera. But it will certainly mean noisier pictures, particularly in low light.



Let me explain. I came across an interesting article today about how more mega pixels is not necessarily a good thing. According to Image Engineering ( 6mpixel.org/en/?  ) – a company that does testing of digital cameras for photo magazines in Germany – the quality of digital pictures has steadily decreased since the state of the art was six megapixels back in 2004. And because they don’t have a “dog in this hunt,” they put forth a compelling argument for buying new digital cameras with less mega pixels and not more.



The argument is essentially this: CCD chips on point and shoot cameras a smaller and as such, fitting in more pixels causes them to lose light sensivity. Sure, there’s more data on the chip, but the chip can’t absorb the light data and what it ends up with is a picture that has more noise than image quality. In addition, the more megapixels a camera has, the larger the lens it needs to provide the clarity it deserves and prevent diffraction due to a loss of detail with smaller apertures. But since we’re talking portable point and shoots here, those large lenses simply aren’t being made.



Finally, with larger mega pixels comes longer saving time due to their requires huge storage capacity, or more compression if not storing images in RAW format. The result is a noisier image and a dissatisfied camera user who thirsts for high quality and speed but fell into the trap of "more must mean better."



In the end, relying on a smaller MP that can balance all these needs may indeed be a better answer.

ABSOLUTELY.

The delay might be where the camera is storing the picture to memory. You should be able to get an underwater casing on the web.