What I've been doing with my time off so far...

[sally_maria]

Is mostly looking at pictures of Bradley James playing football. (iz incurably shallow. ;-D)

But we did go out to look at cameras, as mine is 6 years old and Mum had said she would get me a shiny new one for my birthday in a couple of weeks.



I wasn't looking for anything too unnecessarily complex, as I'm pretty much a point and shoot photographer. I also knew that there was little point going for a camera with a vast number of megapixels, as I wouldn't be using them - what's the point of creating pictures that are bigger than some of the programs on my computer, just to put them up online or occasionally print them at normal photo size.

I was looking for a decent amount of optical zoom, though, as it's the thing I regret most about my old camera - there are times when being able to zoom in properly on things would have been a godsend.

So after looking at what was on offer, I decided on the Panasonic Lumix DMC FS6



8 megapixels, which is more than enough for me to use most of the time, 4x optical zoom, rather than the usual 3x at this level and while the Leica lenses are made by Panasonic rather than Leica themselves, it's nice to see them bothering about the standard of the lenses at all in a basic camera like this. It has a quite a few settings to play with, if I feel like it, but will also work most of the time as a point and shoot camera. I haven't really tried it out much yet, but hopefully I'll be better at remembering to take it places than I have been with the old one recently.

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

Ah, you're a lot like me with regard to cameras, then - I'm very much a point-and-shoot person. This is because I like to take photos of people, and if you don't do that quickly they don't look natural (why, yes, Charles, I am thinking of you in particular... basically if you don't snap Charles really fast he develops an air of having just been unpacked from a box).

My camera has optical zoom, and I wouldn't be without it. It's a Kodak, a little out of date now (already!) but perfectly adequate for my purposes. I chose it for two reasons: the optical zoom and the shutter speed. Some digital cameras have an unacceptable delay on them. Mine doesn't, which was quite something at the time I bought it, given that it wasn't a hugely expensive camera. They seem to be getting better now.

Yours looks great, and also a lot lighter than mine, which is a plus - not that mine's heavy, but there's more of it than there is of yours. When the time comes for me to replace mine I'll definitely consider something like that, as long as the shutter speed is OK.

[sally_maria]

Yes, it's pretty light, I think mostly because it uses a mobile phone style rechargeable battery, rather than AA ones. I suppose it could be a problem if I do use it up while I'm away, but based on my brother's experience with his, it will last for a lot, lot longer than the batteries did in my other camera.

One of the things I like about it, and that you can't really see in this picture is that the controls on the back are sensibly arranged, and while the buttons are quite small they have enough clearance around them so you shouldn't hit the wrong one if you're in a rush. That's a big plus for me - I hate the way a lot of appliances have hundreds of tiny buttons, and it's almost impossible to hit the right one.

I know exactly what you mean about the shutter speed, my old one was quite a shock going from a film camera, but I suppose I've got used to it. This one does seem to be noticeably faster, though it'll be interesting to see how it responds in different light levels.