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| Blackberry Flowers, Golden Gate Heights Park |
When I accidentally dropped my FZ80 on a cement slab about a month ago, I was surprised it didn't simply explode into pieces. It actually still worked, but eventually the large ring at the base of the lens fell off, and more recently the lens would hesitate to zoom. Nevertheless, I'd have continued to use it until it died, but since Panasonic just came out with its successor, the FZ80D, I decided to upgrade now.
It arrived on Tuesday, so I took it around on my Wednesday walk and bike ride, and I'm happy to say I'm not disappointed. The larger viewfinder is my favorite part of the upgrade. The clarity is immediately striking. (I find it much easier to hold the camera steady and compose through a viewfinder than on a screen on the back of the camera.)
They also moved the diopter adjustment ring from the right side of the viewfinder to the left side, where it's less likely to be accidentally changed while handling the camera. However, I did still manage to spin it out of focus once while taking it out of my bike bag. [UPDATE: As of 10/9, I have never had to adjust it again. It's a big improvement.]
When I composed my first shots on my morning walk I remembered one glitchy feature shared by the FZ80. Even if the LCD screen is turned off, touching it can still change the settings. I'd set the focus to 1-Area (to better choose what I want most in focus, such as a bird behind branches), but when I went to compose the shot in the viewfinder, my nose touched the screen and moved the 1-Area dot from the center of the frame to the top right corner. Thankfully, you can go into the menus to turn off that feature.
One thing I'd been meaning to do with my old FZ80 was take it more seriously as a camera instead of just setting it to Program mode and firing away. After all, that's why they call it a "point and shoot," right? Although I'd often end up with a shutter speed too slow to capture the action, I just accepted the missed shot and moved on.
Today I decided to try to remedy that situation, and it seems like the easiest way to increase the shutter speed is to increase the ISO, which can be set as low as 80 or as high as 3200. You can change the ISO with the little cursor button on the back of the camera. Now I set the camera to Program mode and crank up the ISO until I get the shutter speed I want. The max shutter speed is 1/2000th sec., so if you crank the ISO unnecessarily high, you end up with an over-exposed shot.
I also bought a new, faster-reading SD card, and the viewfinder black-out period after taking a picture is maybe shorter, but still somewhat obnoxious.
All the shots in this post used the camera's highest JPEG mode. (I haven't tried shooting RAW files yet.) The resulting FZ80D files are a bit larger than the old FZ80's, coming in at around 9,500 - 10,000 megabytes versus 7,000 - 7,500. Click on any picture to view it larger.
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| Autum Leaves, Forest Hill Steps |
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| Redwood Leaves |
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| Cloud Forest, Golden Gate Heights Park |
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| Fallen Hazel Leaf on Moss |
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| Echeveria elegans |
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| Resting Bison |
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| Black Phoebe, Cliff House (ISO 200) |
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| This is the full-frame image view, with the full 1200mm telephoto extension (hand-held but bracing on a sea wall), from which the next cropped frames show different ISO settings. |
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Focus-tracking does work, at least sometimes.
(1200mm, image cropped, 1/1250 sec. @ f/5.9, ISO 400) |
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| White-crowned Sparrow, Cliff House |
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Bathing Pelicans
(I kept them in my viewfinder in the hope of photographing them on take-off, but they just drifted farther and farther away, splashing and preening without a care in the world.) |
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Western Gull Flying Past Cliff House
(976mm, image uncropped, 1/2000 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 200) |
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| A foursome of wandering tattlers took a rest break on the sandstone cliffs during high tide. |
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| Solo Tattler, Cliff House |
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| This red-tailed hawk swooped out of the nearby woods in Golden Gate Park and landed on a branch right in front of me. |
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| The take-off doesn't look terribly graceful, but at least the hawk isn't a complete blur (zoom at 855mm, 1/500 sec., wide open @ f/5.6, ISO 800). |
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| Cabbage White on an Aster, Metson Lake |
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| Cattail, Metson Lake |
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| Lawn Agarics, Metson Lake |
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| The FZ80D in a case within my bike's trunk bag. I got the case so it wouldn't get jostled around as much in the trunk. The case was made for the FZ80, and the FZ80D's larger viewfinder barely fits. |
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