It’s taking a long time to move all my travelling photos over, but I’m getting there.

And I might even transition by blog to Blogger, as there’s a nifty way to mirror it onto my hosting via FTP, I’ve been reading.

Have a look at my budding new gallery here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tcbutler/

T.

And, as usual, here are the pictures.

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As I usually agree with dcm’s verdicts on cameras this is the final piece of vindication I was looking for – this camera is great! The review isn’t online yet, but here’s their review of the broadly similar FZ20: http://www.dcmag.co.uk/news/article.asp?SP=&v=1&UAN=527. The Fz30 is a lot nicer to look at (the proportions are better) and it feels better in your hands… the button layout in particular is a bit odd on the Fz20, particularly the buttons above the screen… quite how you’re meant to support that huge lens and the body AND operate the buttons is beyond me. Happily the Fz30 fixes all of those issues, with only the AE lock being slightly out of reach.

Top tip – ISO400 may sound like a good idea in low light, but ISO 100 with +2EV is much less work once you get it back onto your PC! The noise at high ISO is such that I wonder why the higher ISOs were included – it really is like having an “add random noise” function in the menus. I’ve been using niceimage (there’s a free demo version which does everything I need!) which is remarkably good at identifying the camera’s noise profile and removing it; sadly I took around 300 photos at a work event with about half of them at ISO400… it’s taken a while to rescue them. It should be said though that 300 photos, 75% with flash over the course of around 3 or 4 hours used about 2/3 of the juice in the battery – fairly amazing performance.

Overall, very very happy. As the early review from dpreview said, it’s well-built (I’d already had a play with one on Tottenham Court Road), well-designed (most of the buttons, dials, switches etc are in the ‘right’ place for my hands) and, most importantly, has taken some brilliant outdoors shots so far. High-ISO is also high-noise in most cases, but as some other reviewers have said, it’s a matter of taking the time to really get to know the camera. Every hour which passes with it my photos get better and I’m more comfortable with them, and I’m actually finding that the very sharp LCD is actually rather harsh on the quality of the images – zoom in 16x and sure, there’s noise in most shadows at ISO 200, but I’m fairly certain the pictures will print excellently.

However, it should be said that on the first night of ownership photos taken sans flash, ISO 200, F2.8 at a party in a fairly well-lit room are pretty noisy.

The ease of manual control has its down-sides too – the camera does an admirable job of removing purple fringing when you ‘get it right’ – but in some of my experiments I’ve managed to acquire purple fringes which completely dominate the picture (much worse than my old Canon PS s60)… it’s all a learning process I guess – I then managed to take the exact same shots at a smaller aperture with no fringing.

The interface is slick, fast and intuitive (though it’s a bit of a laundry-list of options in the menus – not logically grouped at all) and the body feels just right, with the lens feeling particularly solid and reliable. There’s some nice damping on the manual zoom ring and the focus ring – they both feel a lot better than the manual zoom ring on the K-M A200, which has a teeth-on-edge plastic-on-plastic feeling which I found disconcerting in the shop.

More thoughts to follow, and some pictures once I get around to uploading them.

But I’ve managed to get a just-released camera with £150 off the RRP, and am very excited about it arriving. I’ll update on where I got it from once it arrives.

Also, I am a cyborg.

… why am I changing cameras?

• I’m bored with my S60. It’s a brilliant camera, but it’s aimed at the amateur photographer who wants to have a bit of a fiddle with some manual settings, but not at someone who wants to keep developing their skills and understanding of photography and photographic equipment. I know 75% of photography is about composition and timing, but when you get that perfectly composed picture you want to be at one with your camera so you know you’ll be able to make the most of it, not spend 20 mins beggaring around with settings while the perfect shot disappears.
• I’m convinced that I’d be a more confident photographer if I had a camera which looked the part. The S60 in its case can be chucked into a rucksack or velcroed onto the outside without much thought, and is top for taking pictures of ‘things’ – buildings, landscapes, doors, lighting (with a lot of fiddling)… but when you want to take a picture of a person (especially one you don’t know) you feel like a tourist rather than a photographer, and it makes me think twice before asking someone.
• Low light, macros, low depth-of-field images… all these things are hard to set up and produce unpredictable results – sometimes brilliant, sometimes not, however long you spend tweaking settings. I want something with easily accessible manual controls (ie – dials where your hands sit, rather than using the cursors on the back of the unit) and where I can at least see what I’m doing through the viewfinder.

And… I just want to upgrade, because I tire quickly of new things.

So, which ones am I looking at…

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/a200.html
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/minolta/dimage_a200-review/index.shtml
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/KMA200/A2A.HTM
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/konicaminoltaa200/
Price: here

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/c8080_pg6.html
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/olympus/c8080wz-review/
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympusc8080wz/

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/pro1.html
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_pro1-review/index.shtml
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canonpro1/
Price: here

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/nikon8800.html
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/nikon/coolpix8800-review/index.shtml
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/CP8800/CP88A.HTM
Price: here

Ljubljana
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Croatia
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10 random photos from my time in Australia.

Feedback always welcome.

Tom’s guide to choosing a digital camera