Experimenting with a new camera

During our trip West and North the lens cover on my Panasonic TZ40 camera (which operated automatically began to be uncooperative.  At times it wouldn't completely cover the lens (not good for keeping the lens clean) and at others it wouldn't fully retract (giving a black blurry slice in the images).  My experience with camera shops (and/or manufacturers) is that they charge a fortune to even investigate such matters.

So it was new camera time.  I'll keep the TZ40 available for situations such as running where small size (in essence fitting in a pocket) is very useful.

In essence I like the massive zoom available on Panasonic cameras and a birding colleague had commented aboout the 60X zoom available on the larger FZ70.  So one was acquired.  There are a couple of convenient things about this:

  • It takes the same sized battery as an FZ40 of which I have an old one lurking around so I now have plenty of battery capacity; and
  • It has the same size output slot as the TZ40, so I now have a spare connector which is very useful when going traveling.

I tested the new device on 10 August, and while I still need to fine tune a couple of things it worked rather well.

It has a macro-zoom feature which is good on eucalypt blossom.
This is pretty much a point and shoot of a Black Swan.  I was about 3m away from the bird and most amused by the bendy neck.
This isn't the sharpest image possible of an Australasian Shoveler but it was taken at about 80m range with a background of sunlit water.  And I need to sort out the autofocus setting a tad,
 These geese have taken up residence on the Molonglo.
 These geese were just passing through.
I have no idea what they were up to: probably something along the lines of "have outboard motor will go and make a noise somewhere".   What I am interested in, is that I'm fairly sure there were 4 in the boat the first time they went past!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the birds: The view from the top of
Read more