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Thursday, 3 April 2008

New Toy

Since I dropped my Kodak 'digi-scoping' camera in Spain, I was convinced by the boys at Stevie Taylor's do the other night that I should buy a Lumix camera.......so I did! A Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 to be precise. It's kinda nice'n'easy to use and has loads things on it that I still haven't a scooby about, but I thought I would take it out for a bit of a play today.

I was trapped in County Hall, so couldn't get to the pools, so I went to one of my favorite sites in the whole county, Scotch Gill Woods LNR in Morpeth, down by the River Wansbeck. If you haven't been there check it out, good place for woodland birds and especially flowers, the site is on a line of springs, so you get nice wet flushes throughout the wood. I am a bit biased as I used to help look after it in my last job.
Anyhoo, plenty of chiffies singing (10+) at lunch time, also dipper and grey wag on the river and marsh tit and at least 6 nuthatches in the wood, also a comma butterfly, my first of the year. The woodland floor was a carpet of wood anenome's (wind flowers) in places, with a nice show of marsh marigolds in one of the flushes and butterbur ( a much under-rated flower I reckon) in flower.

I got some shots, but really just playing with it at the moment - but am impressed so far. The zoom can be extended to 28X if you go down to 3 mega-pixel and the macro seems quite good too, sure I will need to get to grips with it before we go to China.



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9 comments:

  1. Anonymous4 April 2008 at 03:17

    that seems like really cool camera, nice shots!

    Arlene,
    Silverdale florist

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  2. Ghost of Stringer4 April 2008 at 22:43

    I'm thinking of getting one... meant to be good for close flitty things that you can't digiscope..... I'm also told they're idiot proof.... so should be fine for me eh....

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  3. Blyth Birder5 April 2008 at 10:12

    They are indeed idiot-proof - look no further than me for evidence of that.

    Get yourself an Olympus T-con 1.7 to screw on the end and you'll get another 1.7x more magnifaction.

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  4. Ipin5 April 2008 at 10:31

    It would appear to be idiot proof, which is also great for me! Alan Gilbertson uses it for shots of stuff flitting about in bushes etc with good success, he sues a 1.7 T converter too. BB2 why do you reccomend an olympus one over the Panasonic one?

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  5. Stewart5 April 2008 at 19:31

    I want that one. Whats wrong with your blog? Why dont the images go big when double clicked? See we told you your new camera would be a good idea.

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  6. ST5 April 2008 at 20:23

    if you are loading your images up at 600 pixels they won't get any bigger.
    he recomends that lens cos it fits yours if you want to try this out. i use an olympus camera and have that tele con. you can see before spending . £50 quid is the cost of them.

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  7. abbey meadows5 April 2008 at 21:56

    Excellent shots on my local patch but for the time being I will have to be content with me Box Brownie

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  8. Anonymous9 April 2008 at 03:48

    Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 video blog at digital cameras blog

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  9. Ipin11 April 2008 at 01:34

    I love Scotch Gill Woods, I used to help manage it (and borough woods, atheys dene etc) when I worked for CMBC, it's a top spot! for a local patch it will rarely turn up much 'new' but the ressies are fab! keep working it and you never know...

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