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| Fog & Forested Ridges |
I've been getting my new Panasonic FZ80 dialed in to my own nature photography needs -- setting up single-point focus and AF/AE lock, figuring out the distance limits for close-up shots, and especially turning off the touch screen so my nose doesn't change the focus point whenever I compose in the viewfinder!
I took it along when I biked up to Mt. Tam on Friday to swap out the memory card in my trail camera, and it was fun to poke around the creek areas and snap a few frames of the local flora and fauna. Sometimes it's fun to just go out and shoot without a tripod and remote release, without mirror lock-up, without diffusion screens or focus rails, without a backpack full of gear, and without making the kinds of investments of energy involved in using my "real" camera. Of course, all those cut corners show in the resulting images, and that's okay. Sometimes I just want to grab a bite to eat, not make a fancy meal.
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| Two Hikers on the Landscape |
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| Skipper on the Gumweed |
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| Acmon Blue on the Gumweed |
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Buckeye in the Grass
(instead of on the dirt trail, its other preferred camouflage) |
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| The Pencil Thin Garter Snake I Almost Stepped On |
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| Some Sort of Dragonfly Nymph or Mayfly? |
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California Newt
(with out-of-focus water boatman above its tail) |
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Even Pesky Horse Flies Need A Drink of Water Sometimes
(fortunately they were not biting yet; maybe they don't go for blood
until it's time to reproduce) |
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| Grappletail Basking In The Weeds |
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| Leopard Lily With Cooper's Hawk Feather |
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Chipmunk On The Move
(the autofocus is quick, but there's a lag in the viewfinder after you take the picture,
so it's not possible to smoothly follow a moving subject)
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