Camera
I just scored a new digital camera yesterday, the Panasonic Lumix FZ20.
A pickpocket snatched my previous camera, a 2-year-old 3-megapixel Olympus Camedia, right out of the bag a couple months ago without me or my wife noticing. Bastard. A nimble-fingered bastard, but a bastard nonetheless.
Of course I was inclined to view the theft as an opportunity to upgrade to a better camera.
The Panasonic is 5 megapixels and has a sweet Leica lens with 12x optical zoom. The awesome thing about this lens is that the f-stop is 2.8 all the way out to 12x, meaning it can shoot in low-light situations.
Another camera I had considered was a Konica Minolta with similar specs (5 megapixels, 12x zoom) but the f-stop slipped to 4.8 by the time you had it at full zoom.
I was pretty sure I wanted the Panasonic, but it was hard to track down. None of the big electronics chains -- Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Office Depot -- carried it, and I ended up going to a speciality camera store to get one.
I was sold when I asked the clerk for his impressions of the Panasonic and he said it was the best camera you could get without stepping up to an actual SLR.
We asked him about the Nikons and he said they had similar quality, but were at least $200 more expensive.
I haven't had time to really try it out, but in reading the instruction manual it seems there are some really sweet little features, ones that I can actually envision using fairly regularly.
A pickpocket snatched my previous camera, a 2-year-old 3-megapixel Olympus Camedia, right out of the bag a couple months ago without me or my wife noticing. Bastard. A nimble-fingered bastard, but a bastard nonetheless.
Of course I was inclined to view the theft as an opportunity to upgrade to a better camera.
The Panasonic is 5 megapixels and has a sweet Leica lens with 12x optical zoom. The awesome thing about this lens is that the f-stop is 2.8 all the way out to 12x, meaning it can shoot in low-light situations.
Another camera I had considered was a Konica Minolta with similar specs (5 megapixels, 12x zoom) but the f-stop slipped to 4.8 by the time you had it at full zoom.
I was pretty sure I wanted the Panasonic, but it was hard to track down. None of the big electronics chains -- Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Office Depot -- carried it, and I ended up going to a speciality camera store to get one.
I was sold when I asked the clerk for his impressions of the Panasonic and he said it was the best camera you could get without stepping up to an actual SLR.
We asked him about the Nikons and he said they had similar quality, but were at least $200 more expensive.
I haven't had time to really try it out, but in reading the instruction manual it seems there are some really sweet little features, ones that I can actually envision using fairly regularly.
<< Home