I'm sitting here looking proudly at my new purchase. A camera. I can't believe I've actually done this, but I am so envious of all the superb photos on this forum and in the galleries that I couldn't possibly emulate with my Coolpix.
After some research on the internet, advice from a friend, and then the coincidental thread started by Littleowl earlier today, I went out and bought a Panasonic Lumix FZ38 18x. We are lucky to have a photographic retailer locally that is very competitive on price. I paid £249 for it, which I think is an excellent price, and the friendly and obliging retailer is on hand should I need help or if it goes wrong. He recommended this particular camera for a technophobe like me who wants an automatic point and shoot with a good zoom.
I now have to read the instructions. Don't hold your breath for any pictures just yet!!
Cheers, Linda.
See my photos on Flickr
Hi Sparrow,
Congratulations on your new camera, which is the same as mine so I know you will be thrilled with it especially when you have a memory card. It is soooo easy to take hundreds of photos without realising it, particularly if you use the multi shot function! I got mine in September ready for the trip 'down under' and I read and re-read the manual several times to try to understand some of it's functions but mostly I have it on 'auto' and just point and shoot. It does all the hard work for you and zooms right in on those birds. It's brilliant!!! I do hope you enjoy using it.
Love the goldie by the way - great shot of the male's nasal hairs ;-)
SB
There is something new to learn everyday...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/skylark58/
Good for you Sparrow!! That's excellent news! I see you are already getting the hang of it!! Looking forward to many more pics! Very pleased indeed about you getting your photos back too! I've yet to buy an external hard disk drive but do burn on to CD or DVD!
Squirrel, not wishing to put you off the HDD in your link, but I was going to buy a Seagate until I read reviews about the infamous 'Seagate tick of death'.... I've been looking now at the Hitachi 1TB simpledrive, but so far have only found 1 (good) review.... Actually, that's why I haven't bought one yet! Just can't decide...
"All weeds are flowers, once you get to know them" (Eeyore)
My photos on Flickr
Thanks MarJus and everyone. I am slowly working things out withthe camera.
I like my pen drives. They are easy and suit my needs, and are much cheaper!
Hi MarJus, I haven't heard of the "tick of death"!!!
The one I posted the link to was recommended to me by someone who already has it and she stores all her photos and videos on it.
The necessity of bird-watching is a really good reason for avoiding all forms of housework.
The dust will still be there tomorrow - the birds may not be!
Hi Squirrel!
It was mentioned in quite a few reviews on Amazon, so I did a Google on it and found quite a bit about it! Probably the majority of the drives are fine... but it's ending up with one that isn't that worries me!!
I am inherently suspicious of computer hardware having had my laptop hard drive fail irrecoverably, and would hate to lose my photos to a hardware crash. In my paranoia I have gone for two external hard discs with a copy of everything on each, as well as CD back-ups. I have Western Digital drives, bought when they were getting good reviews for reliability etc, but it seems that their latest offerings are not so good. I guess all we can do is to have enough multiple backups so that if any particular piece of kit fails there is a possibility to restore everything from other sources.