New toy

The purchase of a Panasonic Lumix G3 came about after an increasingly unhappy relationship with a Fuji FinePix S1500 camera which frequently crashed, losing photographs. This is a shame because other than that it’s not a bad camera for the price. Replacement memory cards, new batteries, changing the settings etc didn’t help – the damned thing just wasn’t reliable.

Anyway, the G3 came on offer so I took the plunge and bought one, it’s virtually an SLR without actually being one. So far I’m very pleased with the results – although it’s very early days. First results can be viewed here. Many of the photos on this link are very severely cropped and most are taken without a flash, which is why some will appear grainy.

I’m going to Spain soon to walk a section of the Via de la Plata and I wanted a camera that I could rely on. I rather feel this is the one.

A few features that persuaded me that this was the camera for me: A decent sized image sensor, accepts filters, viewfinder, reasonable battery life, much smaller and lighter than an SLR, very little time-lag taking photos, very fast auto-focus, idiot mode (fully automatic if needed, ie: point and shoot)….and lastly: Ian Cotterill reckons they’re a good buy.

‘Nuff said.