Geek4ever

So I got myself a new digital camera the other day the: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX30.

Here are the reasons why I bought this model.

• The main reason: 28mm lens. Panasonic have a pretty good flash demo on why 28mm is better than 35mm. I love the flexibility and the types of shots you get with a 28mm lens, anything else is just not worth it IMHO. :-)
• Wanted a very small camera that could fit in my pocket. I had a bigger camera and just didn’t take it anywhere with me.
• 3x zoom is all I needed. I found that I didn’t use the zoom much at all. Most cameras with a big zoom are physically bigger and size was pretty important to me.
• Just needed JPG, no RAW or anything like that, I just point and shoot, unless you have a DSLR JPG should get the job done.
• This camera had ’scene modes’ where you select the type of scene via an easy GUI menu, eg sunset, fireworks, close up, pet, shot via plane window. The camera is then optimised for that type of shot. Very very handy.
• Had an image stabilisation feature that was fantastic, it would not only stabilise the image, the camera would increase the ISO speed to a preset max to ensure you had a clear non blurry picture. Perfect example: I took hundreds of shots from a speedboat that was bouncing along, only a handful of those were blurry or out of focus, most were perfect despite the boat bouncing up and down a lot.

Am I happy with the camera?

Oh yeah. I went to Thailand on holiday for a week earlier this year and took the camera with me. It was fantastic, battery lasted a whole day easily and that was about 400 shots that I took. I had a 2gb SD card and a spare battery and a tiny little tripod for night shots.

The software that came with the camera was ok, though there are so many quality free offerings out there such as Google Picasa, that I don’t see that as an issue.

Click the Opera House picture for the full size 1.7mb

How do you decide?

Think about what kind of shots you like to look at and perhaps take, I find that I prefer the wide angle as I like landscape type shots, sunsets, group photos etc. It took me 3 cameras to get what I felt was right.

The main drawback with big zoom is that hand shake becomes a real issue, so most cameras have some kind of image stabilization, though for best results you still need to use a tripod and they aren’t fun to carry around. :-)

Panasonic do have a camera with big zoom and 28mm lens, the DMC-TZ3.

What about Image hosting?

As for image hosting, can’t say I have used any sites, though Photobucket looks good.

For free you get 1gb of space with 25gb transfer per month - that’s plenty for family and friends.
You can also password protect the images so that only friends and family with the guest password you hand out can view the images. Looks like it should suit most peoples needs.

Good luck with whatever camera you choose to buy, and always always, make backups of those precious memories! :-)