Panasonic Lumix FZ150

And the winner is...

A few weeks ago, I was in the process of deciding what new camera I wanted to buy.  I had decided on the Fuji HS30.  Shortly after that, I took a short motorcycle trip which gives me lots of time to think on roads I've been on many times.  I noodled over the differences in the cameras and decided many of the descriptions of the HS30 had one troubling feature - that the focus could be slow.  Several reviews called it lazy.  After looking into the hard numbers for focus and lock times, I changed my mind and bought the Panasonic Lumix FZ150.  I think I would have been happy with the HS30 and I really like that it has a manual zoom, but so far, the FZ150 has met my expectations.

My picture taking falls into three categories.
1.  Candid shots with friends or at family gatherings, etc.  I really think the best option here is a quality point and shoot.  The small sensor allows for a broad depth of field and the camera can be handed to anyone to take pictures.  Cost is low and if it is dropped or broken it is not a big loss.
An SLR is an OK option, but cost is high and the large sensor can be a negative at times with a too-narrow depth of field.  The super-zoom is an adequate option filling the definition of a bridge camera.

Candid pictures of the dogs show the FZ150 is perfectly capable here with fast focus times and very good resolution.  The picture below is of Jackson lounging in the back yard.

On an extreme crop into his back, we can see the even though this is a picture taken at a moderate zoom, the resolution is more than adequate to see individual hairs on his back.  This is pretty impressive.

2.  Vacation photos.  A small point and shoot runs into problems for anything but the relatively close shots.  SLR cameras are great for this IF you are willing to lug around a few lenses and have the tenacity to bring them with you when venturing away from the storage capacity of a motor vehicle.  But, here is where the super-zoom or bridge camera shines.  Good resolution, light weight, easy to carry and sufficient zoom to compose pictures well.
Since much of my vacationing is hunting or with limited capacity of what I can store in my motorcycle saddle bags, the super-zoom makes most sense for me.

I'll be going on vacation soon and will have more of an opportunity to test the FZ150 in this capacity.  I really wish I had played with the High Dynamic Range (HDR) capability of the Panasonic for the picture above, but there will be other opportunities for that in the future.
It is the gunner, not the gun...  Vacation pictures are also where composition makes the difference between a great picture and a painful one.  In 2009 I went bear hunting.  While getting pictures taken with my bear, I gave my camera to Ed.  His pictures were not bad, they were terrible.  How anyone can take a point and shoot camera and take such terrible pictures is beyond me.  Every shot was poorly framed.  Luckily, Stan took some good pictures to capture the event.
I've also seen pictures of friends vacations where every picture is a close-up of a person.  These could commemorate the occasion, but they might as well be taken in the back yard.

I have at times gone to great lengths to get the right vacation picture.  There is one extreme example of this.  In 2008 I rode my motorcycle to Alaska.  On the way north, there was a place where I was able to get a great picture of the Alaska Highway.  After viewing the picture later however, the light was just not right and the drain tile in the frame was distracting.

On the way into Southeastern Alaska nearly a week later, I backtracked hundreds of miles to retake the picture.  The light was near perfect and the composed shot was wonderful.  I'm very glad I had the time and took the time to do this as it has to be one of the best pictures of that entire trip.

3.  Pictures for sake of photography.  These are the pictures that I take just for the fun of it.  Cropping is cheating and anything beyond minor post photograph manipulation is also wrong.  I might even call them art.  Often, I see a picture on-line, in a magazine or anywhere and it sparks an idea of what I would like to try.  Here, an SLR is by far the best choice if one is willing to invest in many lenses.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I still have my Pentax K1000, but the benefits of digital photography means it stays in the closet unused.  I still wish someone would make a less expensive digital fully manual student camera compatible with old lenses (these can often be bought on the cheap).  Alas, I doubt this will happen.  The super-zoom is an adequate choice for this and more than adequate as long as there is enough light.  To quote a letter to the British Journal of photography from 1880, "This new fangled idea of ready-made plates takes all the fun out of photography.  The next stage might be a shop to produce prints and lantern slides to order -- but that is too distressing to anticipate." This is not a new issue for a Luddite.

Compared to other digital non-SLR cameras I have used, the focus times on the FZ150 are excellent. At wide angle, the lock time is near instantaneous. I've been desperately trying to get a picture of one of the hummingbirds in the Rose of Sharon bush near the house. I still have not succeeded in getting a good one, but I can't blame the camera for that. This picture was taken through the screen in the front window. The picture is not that good, but does demonstrate the ability of the Panasonic to focus quickly in a challenging environment.

I love macro photography.  The FZ150 does a great job in this, much better than I expected.  Wide angle focusing is approximately 1cm.  It has a 52mm lense thread which accepts filters.  This is great since I have 52mm macro filters which allow very close focusing even at longer zoom ranges.  There is some vignetting, but I can accept that for the flexibility this allows during composed pictures.

Yesterday, I planted some paw paw trees that I had started from seeds.  This morning was one of the first dewy fall-like mornings of the year which allowed a great opportunity to capture the small plants in low angle sunrise light.

So what don't I like about the camera?  Everything in life is a trade-off.  Everything.
The manual controls are not as easy as they could be.  This is somewhat offset by the abilities of the Program mode of the camera.  There should be easier access to the ISO setting in full manual mode and a faster method to access all functionality after the controls disappear from the screen.
I don't fully understand the flash use on this camera and the manual does not describe it very well.  It works flawlessly in fully automatic mode, but in the more creative modes it is a little obtuse.  So far, I tend to get overexposed shots when using the fill flash mode (not in full auto though).  I'm sure I'll figure this out.  In the interim, Intelligent Automatic mode works well for this.
I originally ordered the camera from an East Coast vendor who had a price a little better than amazon.com.  Several days after ordering it, I still had not received notice that it shipped.  Only after I contacted them did they inform me that they were no longer carrying this (popular) camera as the FZ200 had just been announced.  I found it odd that the FZ150 would not be sold as it is likely months until the FZ200 will be readily available.  The advancement of the FZ200 camera is a full f2.8 throughout the zoom range which is quite an optical engineering feat.  As there is no such thing as "best" I decided not to wait for this option which would have taken at least months to get and cost approximately $200 more.

As of now, I'm happy with my purchase of the Lumix FZ150.  It does what it advertised and does it very well.  I may have been just as happy with any of the other options, but as I was still relatively happy with my old super-zoom, I anticipate many good pictures from the Panasonic.

Vacation is only a few weeks away.  This will be a true test of the camera to perform as well as a robustness test as it bounces around the country in a saddle bag through whatever weather I can find.

A Beagle Named Sammy

It is fitting to write about Sammy right after Mandy.  They were siblings.  Separated in age by many years.  No, there was probably no genetics shared between them, but those two misfits loved each other one minute, then fought to blood the next, exactly like human siblings.

Sammy came from the same humane shelter as Mandy.  I was working and going to school full time so the right thing to say was that it probably wasn't the best time to have one dog let alone two.  Instead, I thought Mandy would be happier by not being alone all the time I was at school or work; besides, I really wanted another dog.  I was away a lot, but my hectic driving schedule made it pretty easy to stop at home frequently.
The shelter again had several beagles available.  One was a very sweet beagle mixed with a little bit of basset.  She was scheduled to be in the newspaper as one of their ad dogs in the near future.  The policy of the shelter was that dogs in the news paper had to be available for a few weeks after being in the paper and then if there was multiple parties interested, there was a complicated choice system.  Net, it would be many weeks, if I would have gotten her.  Sammy on the other hand was the runt of a litter of sickly beagle pups that came in.  All the other pups died shortly after being brought in but somehow Sammy did not, even though she was very small and had a hernia.  I'm not sure how I could have said no to her.
After the usual hoops to jump through, I was able to pick her up on a late Friday.  I didn't want her to have another weekend in the shelter, so I picked her up on the way to school for a night class.  The temperature was such that she would be fine in the truck while I was in class, and it was scheduled to be a short class.
On the way to school, Sammy squirmed her way out of her cardboard box and jumped all over, the puppy that she was.  Distracted by this, I locked my keys in the vehicle as I leaving for class.  I had a friend who was a police officer at the school, he stopped by after I was able to call the security office. He made short order of the door with a slim jim and I got my keys.  Luckily, Brandon did not see that I had a puppy in the car.

After class, I got back to my car.  Not surprisingly, Sammy was not in her box.  She had pooped in my truck as well.  Luckily, it was a pretty awful truck with a plastic interior so clean-up was not an issue.
I went home and after the typical dog smelling, Mandy and Sammy quickly bonded.  Sammy was probably the easiest dog to house train, likely because Mandy had learned the rules, and helped.  I'm not sure if this is actually possible, but any time Sammy had an accident, Mandy barked like crazy, "Don't do that in the house!  It makes 'em mad!"

Mandy and Sammy quickly became best friends.  They slept most of the day in a small bed; there were actually two beds, but they were always in the same one.  They shared food, but only out of different bowls.  They fought about everything.  Both dogs had split ears (Sammy's were far worse) from the fights, those long floppy beagle ears are very vulnerable.  The fights only lasted a few minutes and were followed by dog-apologies.  In one notable case after moving to Ohio, Sammy and Mandy were with me on the way home from running errands, with a stop for pigs ears at the pet store.  The pig ears in the bag instigated a fight that ended up under the brake pedal.  Luckily, it didn't turn out as poorly as it could have.

Sammy was definitely the trouble maker.  The dog gates meant nothing to her.  Two dog gates on top of each other meant nothing to her.  There was nothing she couldn't find her way around or through.  She learned to open cupboards to extract toys - blender, a full container of Crisco, dog food.  I had to put child locks on all the cupboards for years because of her.  Any door that was ajar was completely open to her deft paws.
In the apartment after moving to Ohio, Sammy and Mandy had to be tied up in the kitchen when home alone.  Sammy found a way to open a drawer, climb on the counter, share the dog treats and go to the other side.  Her leash was just long enough to not hang her and she dug through the drywall, creating a shelf to get a paw on, back onto the counter and to the correct side.  Imagine the surprise when I came home to the dog treat jar talking (Snausages, Snausages...) a hole in the wall, and two innocent looking beagles.  It was never a dull moment with her.
She loved the squirrels in the back yard.  She would spend hours stalking them, wanting to come in and peer out the back door until they returned from the safety of the trees, to be let out and stalk them again.  I don't remember her ever catching one, but she never tired of this as a young dog.  Even as she got older she had a lust for all small mammals.  I tried a couple times to take her to hunt bunnies, but she had an innate fear of guns.  I let her run around while I unsuccessfully hunted.  She was happier that way.

I got more beagles through the years, to a total of 4 for quite a while.  Sammy got crabbier as she got older.  Her perfect world was the two people in her life and Mandy, that's it.  She tolerated some of the other dogs, notably Dixie, but had an obvious distaste for Lucky and Soda.  She really didn't even like other people very much.  In one case when there was a house full of people, Sammy broke the rules to go upstairs to get away from all the people.  Unlike most of my dogs, she hated the vet, and kenneling was terrible for her.
Through all this Mandy and Sammy had a bond none of my other beagles have ever had.  When Mandy  died, I hung her collar from the rear view mirror in my truck where it remains today.  A few weeks later, Sammy was in the truck and craned her neck to put her nose on the collar and smell it.  A beagle always looks a little sad and Sammy was more expressive than most, but there is no doubt she missed Mandy.

Sammy aged like us all.  She pursued small mammals less, and looked more for opportunities to sleep in a comfortable spot or sit by the kerosene heater in the winter.  She started to go down hill quickly.  A trip to the vet concluded her liver and kidneys were not acting normally.  There were three options, expensive treatment which was likely to do little, put her down, or do nothing.  She still had that Sammy spark, so I couldn't put her down.  She hated the vet, so I didn't want to let her live her last few months as a permanent patient, I believe that is selfishly cruel to do to any dog.  She went home and we tried to make her as comfortable as possible.  A day or so before she died, she curled up on the couch with me, something she didn't do very often as getting on the couch was not easy for her.  I'd like to believe it was her goodbye.

Sammy was the only dog I've gotten as a puppy.  She and Mandy were best friends, and in many ways my best friends; they were both with me through some rough times.  She was probably the most mischievous dog I've ever had, but never in a deliberate way; she was a total free spirit.  Anybody would be lucky to have had a dog like Sammy in their life.  I know I was.