The past few weeks caught up with me at the weekend. Dancing, tippling (just a little in the spirit of family celebration you understand!) dog walking, training and playing with Polly, curry nighting with my kids and working towards my show ... (all in all, just real life I suppose) had me yawning my way through Saturday and Sunday. Stuart was no better either! There's no doubt we are much in need of a holiday to recharge our not-quite-as-young-as-they-once-were batteries.
Once the usual weekend chores (big yawn) were dealt with, we scraped ourselves together for a gentle stroll round Leybourne Lakes on Sunday afternoon, but in truth it was more of a trudge in the sunshine. There was no Polly to keep us moving briskly this time, as she was enjoying a walk in Mote Park with my daughter and her boyfriend. So it was just me 'n him, toddling along, on our tod.
Still, besides the fresh air and an orange ice lolly, our half-hearted outing did at least provide me with an opportunity to play with my new camera which was useful because it's a Panasonic Lumix FZ200 and I am somewhat bamboozled by it after my loyal Canon years! I have been frustrated of late by my little pocket sized Canon Ixus 210, which is great for quick snaps outdoors but not so good when I want to take indoor shots in low light. My Canon DSLR is brilliant for photographing just about everything, but fairly bulky and heavy with 600mm zoom lens attached, so less than ideal for carting around on walks. So I developed a yearning for a 'bridge camera', something capable of offering a decent integral zoom lens and extra functionality to bridge the gap between my little point 'n shoot and my posh DSLR.
And I'm sure when I've learned how to use it properly, that's exactly what my Lumix FZ200 will do for me! It's quite a bit bigger than the Canon Ixus, but not heavy and still much smaller than my DSLR. I'm finding my way round all the automatic settings at the moment, but as you can see, it takes lovely crisp pictures. It has a really good 600mm zoom, so I don't feel as though I'm missing anything by not taking my bigger camera out and about with me. I won't be using it for my studio shots as I certainly don't want to retire my lovely Canon 450D, but I will definitely be taking it on holiday to Cornwall later this year ... can't wait to get out on those beautiful Cornish cliff paths with it!!!
Don't run your self down Paula. It sounds like life has been full on with your lovely dog.
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Hi I bought that camera in June for Keith and he is really enjoying it. He printed off the instruction booklet and worked his way through it slowly on holiday so there are strange sequences of things like a pic of my foot in focus and a water bottle behind it blurred, then the next photo is the water bottle focussed and my foot blurred. Very funny but working through it taught him so much of all the amazing things it can do. Happy playing!
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