Wednesday, January 21, 2009

More on cameras


A couple of people have asked for details of my new camera. It's a Panasonic Lumix TZ4. It's too early of course for me to recommend it, all I can say is that I carefully read a lot of reviews before choosing it. Regular readers will also observe that I am not an expert photographer compared with the likes of Andrew Denny. Some interesting facts turned up in my research, the main one being that in the race to offer increased megapixels a number of manufacturers seem to have sacrificed low light picture quality. Often, last year's 8 megapixel model outperforms this year's 10 megapixel model in terms of picture quality.
What I wanted was a pocket camera with a good wide angle lens and of course one that gave good pictures. The TZ4 lens zooms from a pretty wide 28mm to a very long 280mm telephoto (35mm camera equivalents), and seems pretty crisp so far.

Wide angle lenses are not common on pocket cameras, but they're great for landscape photography and inside a confined space like a boat you can get lots more in the picture.

The TZ4 is not the smallest camera out there but you can see that it's pocketable. It feels quite rugged.



I paid £149 for mine but you might find one a bit cheaper if you shop around. Here are a couple of links to reviews of it.




You will be able to judge photo quality yourself by seeing what I post in future, although I will also continue to use my larger Fuji S5600 bridge camera which gives me more manual control. Of course I used that too to take these pictures of the Lumix.

1 comment:

Vallypee said...

Oh I did smile, Neil! I have the Lumix TZ2, and I am also very happy with it...I suppose you realise yours has a Leica lens too! I love the zoom on mine but even with image stabilisation I need it on a fixed surface to get clear pics - not the camera's fault - just my lifelong problem with wobbly hands! Good buy!