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I’ve always loved my Digital Buchineko (white version of the Digital Harinezumi) and when the recent Digital Harinezumi 2 was launched (not long after I bought the Buchineko!), I thought I’d be safe and be able to resist the temptation. It was all well until I dropped by ThirtySix (a cool local toy camera store) with a six-pack of beer. Met up with the owner, gulped some cold beer … he let me ‘have a feel’ of the Harinezumi 2. That’s when trouble began!

One ‘problem’ I’ve always had with the earlier version of this camera was the closeup mode. It does have a closeup/macro mode but the minimum focusing distance was not enough for me. I wanted to go nearer. The Harinezumi 2 answered my prayer (or did I even pray for it?) and now I can go as close as 3cm! The other ‘problem’ was that the earlier version I had (Buchineko) was using a newer version of firmware that doesn’t allow me to (by using some ‘hack’) to shoot in black & white mode … and the Harinezumi 2 comes with an option to switch to black & white mode shooting (both photo and video).

Needless to say … after groping the demo unit of the camera for a while … there goes more money into buying another ‘toy’. The money in my wallet was originally meant to be spent on a 2TB external harddisk!!! Damn! So I went home last night with an empty wallet and a new Harinezumi 2. Too bad I’ve to work today and only be able to take some test shots around my office during lunch hour.

See how close it can get? Yay!

Overall … I am pretty happy with the camera. Like some of those who has played with both the versions of the Harinezumi … I also feel that this new one performs better in black & white mode. Somehow the colors produced by this version seems a little different from the earlier one. I’ll try take some color photos soon to make a 1 to 1 comparison. For now … all I have are some sample test shots in black & white mode.

The ‘trick’ to enable ‘live view’ during shooting is gone in the Harinezumi 2. So you either shoot blindly like most of us using toy cams would, or just compose the photo in video mode and press the ‘ok’ button to switch back to photo mode before pressing the shutter.

Move a little while shooting and you’ll get sometimes some weird ‘effect’. Hahaha! Don’t try this on portraits or you might get slapped by the ‘model’.

Took me a while to figure out how to switch it to black & white mode. Surprisingly there isn’t an option in the menu to directly switch from color to black & white mode! You will have to press the ‘Menu’ button 4 times (after entering the menu mode) and then the ‘Ok’ button twice. I couldn’t find any instruction in the manual for this too. Perhaps it’s one of those ‘hidden’ features? But then … if it was not meant to be a ‘standard feature’ of this new version … then the only new features of this new version are better closeup capability, sound recording in video mode and also a new ‘filter’ in front of the lens which I was told will prevent getting a dark spot when  shooting scenes with the sun right in the frame. The increase in megapixels wasn’t at all of any interest to me though.

I woke up this morning to realise that I still need the external hard disk and had to dig out the last dime from my account to get one. Duh. There goes my beer money for December. Anyone buying me beer for Christmas? 😀

The colors from the Harinezumi 2 seems a little different. Not sure if it is my eyes but the photos seem way saturated and contrast seems much higher.

Oh … I forgot to mention that I picked up two rechargable CR2 batteries from ThirtySix too. These batteries just came in and are not on the shelves there yet but I managed to get the boss to sell them to me … while offering to help test out the performance. I saw these on eBay some time ago while I was hunting for rechargable CR2 batteries. To be honest … the blue (and some in green) batteries does look very scary (and ugly). They look like some little explosives to me. Hahaha. Anyway, I’ve popped in one of them into my Harinezumi 2 and it’s still going strong. I’ll write my findings later when I’ve drained out the charge and recharge them (the 2 batteries come with a charger). No instructions nor box. I don’t even know how long the charging will require. Hahaha. I just hope they won’t explode. 😐 I definitely hope they will be great because the little Harinezumi cameras seem to be big battery suckers!

Note : No Photoshopping were done on all these test shots except resizing.