Panasonic FZ38/35, playing with my new toy, trying out the video

Some local wildlife provided me with the opportunity to test out the video function on this camera and it is a lot of fun working out how it works. I am particularly impressed with with the Power OIS image stabilization, check out how steady the close up shot of the water bird at the end of the video is. This was taken hand held and you can see how long the focal length of the lens was when the image is zoomed out. I never thought that I could get a shot like that without a tripod.

Birds on the lake

BBE

Panasonic FZ38/35, playing with my new toy

Finally I have a new camera. It is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38 (FZ35 in the USA). It is a bridge camera with an 18 X zoom that starts at the equivalent of 27mm, for a 35mm film camera. It has a 12.1 mega pixel capability and can produce video at 720dpi. The leica optics are very impressive. I would have liked a Digital SLR but to put a decent kit together, based on one of these, was just too far out of my budget. I am more than happy with this camera though, it is so nice to have control over aperture and shutter speed again. I am still getting used to it at the moment but I have got some stills to show off.

Apart from a tiny bit of cropping, this picture comes unaltered directly from the camera

A sort of still life scene at about mid range of the zoom

The contrast and colours where deliberately mucked about with, on the computer, for this image, to find out how far I could push an image from this camera

A full wide angle landscape

This was taken at full zoom (about the equivalent of 360mm on a 35mm film camera) and then heavily cropped on the computer. I would estimate that you are only seeing about 6.5-7 mega pixels here

Full zoom with a tiny bit of cropping on the computer

I am hoping to master the video function on this camera, to post an example of what it can do with the moving image soon.

BBE