Liking the Lumix

 

Last week I mentioned ordering waterproof Panasonic Lumix camera and being eager to put it to work. Camera has since arrived and I've played with it home and even spent a day with it around my neck in a trout stream. So far, I'm delighted. The images are ultra crisp and the files plenty big for all that I do. It also has a lot of cool specialty settings that I had fun (maybe too much fun) playing with to see what they did. I also figured out the WiFi easily, and that's going to be hugely handy for so many things. Battery life was less than I'd hoped, but I bought a spare and will always have two charged at the beginning of the day.

 

As anticipated, it was also really nice having a good waterproof camera around Asher's neck. We got far more pictures than we otherwise would have, and he did a really good job and seemed to embrace helping with the photo end of things. Good practice for this summer's Rebel Trout Trek!

 

Another Camera?

Yep. I did it again. Another camera for the collection. In a way it seems silly because I often tote backpack full of cameras. The waterproof point-and-shoot cameras are critical to my approach, though, and one of mine is showing quite a bit of age.

B&H Photo advertised a good deal on the Lumix pictured above today, and I bit. Beyond being waterproof and drop-proof and all that good stuff, this one has WiFi, which means I can go straight to the phone with images from it and post or share them on the spot. That should prove pretty valuable this summer when Asher and I are on the Rebel Trout Trek, and I don't want to stop somewhere to load, sort and send photos.

I'll also want a camera around my neck and one around his most of the time. We'll be fishing a lot of places where anything other than a waterproof camera would have to stay stowed away, and I want either of us ready to go to work when the other one catches a fish or just when we see something cool. It also shoots HD video with one touch of a button, so I ordered a great big memory card to go with it.

Looks like I need to get back in a creek some time very soon to learn how it works and put it to the test!

#RebelTroutTrek

Cool Factor Caution

I can tell after only one evening on the water that I'm going to like my new Fujifilm camera a lot, and I'm confident it has outstanding potential for most of my professional needs. I can also see that I'm going to have to be at least a little bit careful to not get distracted by the "cool" stuff it does. Otherwise, I'm going to come home from a trip, load my pictures, briefly be wowed by some special effects image, and then regret that I hadn't shot the same scene in a straight mode while I had the opportunity.

Some of the effects and modes I liked best from my first evening's experiment are only a twist of a dial from the full auto mode, so shooting things in different ways should be that hard. I just can't get distracted by the unique stuff and forget to take the straight images.

Of course, I only scratched the surface of the camera's potential in a single evening, so I'll be in a major learning mode for quite a while and will be experimenting with scene settings under many different conditions. It's a fun sort of education, though, with a really pretty classroom.

New Toy/Tool

I aded a camera to my toolbag yesterday and am excited to put it to work. The hope, of course, is that I'll get to out it to very good use on some extra large catfish in Tennessee this evening.

Camera is a Fujifilm Finepix S1. It's a point-and-shoot, which admittedly feels a little like a step backward. I really don't think it is, though. It has a giant optical zoom range and fast lens, shoots up to 16 MP and offers the option of shooting raw and a lot of control settings. Extra appealing for today's communication needs, it shoots high def video, has Wifi to work with my phone and has a huge variety of specialty settings for effects.

Learning to navigate the new camera's menus and figuring out the best settings for different situations is going to take some time, but from the little bit of playing I have done I'm excited about prospects.

For now, two batteries are fully charged, and a 64-gig card is loaded and ready. And of course I also have my other cameras charged and ready for action!