Friday 22 August 2008

New Camera Shock

As threatened, I have got a new camera. The Panasonic Lumix was a wonder of compactness and was unique when I bought it in having a wide angle zoom, but its telephoto ability was abysmal and its modest pixel count meant that enlarging long shots gave very iffy results.
So I have invested in a Fujifilm Finepix S8100, a 'bridge' camera with an outstanding 18 times optical zoom (that's 27mm to 486mm in real money), 10 megapixel resolution and antishake. That's just about ideal for architecture, going from wide angle for interiors to telephoto for bits of statuary. To show the difference, here is the picture of the statue of Pavlova on the top of the Victoria Palace Theatre I posted a while back:And here is one I took the other day with my new toy:What a difference! The prima ballerina's face is clear and expressive, and you can see all the details of her costume. Unfortunately, you can also see the lightning conductor sticking out of her head and the wires that presumably help to support her arms as well as keep the pigeons off. The other downside is that I had to stand in the middle of the road to get the shot and was nearly run down by a bus.
More pics soon, if I live.

1 comment:

Philip Wilkinson said...

Great to be able to see her face - lovely. That optical zoom range is amazing. Only a few years ago I bought the forerunner of this camera – a 'mere' 10x optical zoom and half as many megapixels for roughly the same money. What will they do next?