Hugo’s blog

A couple of weeks after having announced the DMC-FZ7, Panasonic announces today the DMC-TZ1.

Before, I had roughly classified my options into two categories: small camera which fits in my pocket versus big camera with lots of manual settings and a nice zoom.

This one combines both: small size, and 10x optical zoom. It is not clear if it has a lot of manual settings though; for example, it doesn’t seem to be featuring manual focus.

The DMC-FZ7 is the next generation for the DMC-FZ5 which had great reviews, so I’m reasonably confident it will have good reviews. It seems that the open question here is: how will the DMC-TZ1 rate?

They’ll both be shipping in March so it looks like I have a few more weeks to wait before taking a decision.

Via Gizmodo, the price of the Pentax *ist DL goes down to $600, which seems like a really good deal for a digital SLR kit.

As I’m still in the market for replacing my dying S30, this is an interesting option. However, despite Gizmodo calling it a fabulous *ist DL digital SLR kit, I have not been able to find a single in-depth review it on the usual digital photography sites to confirm this, and Google isn’t helping either.

Just as was I trying to find out when the DMC-FZ5 was going to be updated as it is now one year-old, Panasonic announces the DMC-FZ7.

It seems to have nice improvements over the highly recommended FZ5. I can’t wait to read full reviews, though this may take a while. I may have to wait a little before changing cameras, as it will start shipping in March.

My faithful PowerShot S30 suffered one too many falls last week. It was far from being the worst that it had seen, but this time, the button is broken. It still kind-of works (bye bye pre-focus as the shutter release lost its half-pressed capability), but who knows how long it will take for the button to stop working completely.

So it’s this time again where I get overwhelmed by the too many options there are in terms of cameras. More than picking a particular model, I have found 3 formats that are attractive:

• Ultra-slim: the Casio Exilim Z750 is very slim and fast; unfortunately, it seems that you need a dock to charge or download pictures, though.Jonathan is always raving about it and pointed out that with an SD card reader and thanks to the great battery, it’s not so much of a problem. It doesn’t have an orientation sensor, but rotating picture by hand is not terrible. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 is also a possibility, with its cool 16:9 CCD, but the pictures it takes seem fairly noisy.
• Compact: the Canon PowerShot S80 seems to be really cool; slightly bigger, slightly slower, but seems to have lots of cool features and manual settings, and a wide-angle lens; I have my doubts about the thumb-operated zooming button though.
• Big zoom: the Panasonic DMC-FZ5 has good features including a 12x zoom; it just is bigger. The Kodak EasyShare P880 has a 5.8x zoom and seems good too, as well as the Kodak EasyShare P850 with its 12x zoom.

I need to look at this a little closer.

Comments on any of those more than welcome.

Ben-Q is selling a $260 8-Megapixel Camera! I don’t know about the quality of the pictures, but the specs look good. Cool!