Camera Lust 2

[bunn]

 I resisted temptation well last year, and never did buy a Panasonic G1. 

Now I'm glad I didn't, as I have a new lust object, the Panasonic GF1  which is even smaller than the G1 and seems to have tidied up a few loose ends, and in particular, performs gratifyingly well on speed compared to the Olympus Pen which is its closest competitior (I like taking photos of things that move about a lot like birds and running dogs, so that's important) 

Buying one will however require me to understand interchangable lenses, which I've not previously needed to worry about - as the GF1 comes with either a 14-45mm lens smaller aperture, or a 20mm lens.  The 20 mm lens is well reviewed, and comes in a nice pancake format that would make it nice and easily portable, but has no image stabilisation, a fixed focal length, so no zoom, and puts the price up a bit too.   Bigger maximum aperture: better in low light tho.  Current camera sucks rather in low light. 

 Or I could go for the default 14-45mm zoom lens, which comes with image stabilisation and can zoom, but isn't so wee and has a smaller aperture, so might be closer to what I've already got. 

I could add this 45-200mm which would probably be rather good for high speed wildlife/dog pics (I think).  

Or I could give up in  confusion, and stick with my current 4 year old compact ultrazoom, which to be fair, usually does a pretty decent job by my fairly low standards.   I've been reading reviews and information about how to choose lenses, but they all seem to focus on deciding what you want to photograph, and my photos tend to swerve wildly from action to landscape to portrait to closeup...!

Comments

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I'm very interested in what you (and others) think on this subject. I too have a Panasonic FZ7, but I'd like a more compact Panasonic since I find that I don't take the FZ7 out with me because it is rather bulky.

I got the FZ7 primarily for the optics and high zoom. The zoom for achitecture shots to see a far away (usually high up) feature up close. I've been very pleased with it so far. It copes very well with capturing low flying aircraft in multi-shoot mode, thinking of EH's Festival of History last year with WWII planes and paratroopers.

But I'd like something with similarly excellent optics which is (more) compact. It wouldn't have to do the fully manual stuff (or even the semi-manual stuff either).

This post prompted me to check out what was available and I might have a more detailed look later on.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I don't mind the size of the FZ7, but definitely didn't want anything any bigger. The TZ10 might be worth a look if you are mostly wanting something with the same sort of oomph but smaller.

The GF1 body seems to be about the same height and width, but narrower - though with a fat lens sticking out, probably not much narrower in practical terms.

Miniaturisation seems to have really come on since the FZ7 came out.