First steps with the Lumix FZ48 bridge camera

Arrived today

Had to wait 2.5 hrs for the battery to charge up, but here is the very first photo I took:


I didn't mess about with the settings, just selected A on the top dial which I assumed was Auto. One thing I noticed straight away is there is a small thumb-dial which will alter exposure, and the 'results' of that adjustment appear in the (large) screen.

Second pic - again no fiddling:


I took a few more later after going through the settings but they weren't much cop - TBH I didn't know what half the settings were The paper manual is not very helpful in this respect, and I have yet to download the manual from the CD-ROM which the paper one says is more detailed

When it got dark I tried out the flash indoors and got sharp but over-exposed pics, so some practice needed there. However, when I had 35mm SLR cameras I didn't have a flash, so I learned to make use of available light, and still prefer to. With my Nikon point & shoot, I found the fill-in flash better than the full flash in most cases, and so there is a lot I can try with this one.

I then found the Intelligent Auto Focus setting, and tried some without flash - got this one -

and this one with zoom


I like it, it's grainy but it reminds me of the old 400 ASA film I used years ago. There is a lot of room - and settings - to improve on that.

I used the camera's own cropping feature to get to this:


They are heavy pics at the moment, file-size wise, but the camera has a generous in-built memory and I also had a 4BG SDHC card handy

Lots to play with, but thought I would share. I think I'm going to enjoy what this camera has to offer - many many thanks to Taffsmum for suggesting it

Cracking photos hon, but I don't see how you can possible put a foot wrong with such a lush subject

Hehe Vicky, he got royally cheesed off with me trying out the Macro setting today! this was about the 4th attempt, and could be used in a behavioural guide for dog body language...



This is the only other pic I took today - called into a shop where a friend works to show him as he's into cameras, and he wanted to see what it could do (I think he's got a crush one of the waiters in the restaurant across the road )


Hopefully tomorrow afternoon I'll be taking it along to a local Open Heritage thingy, where some houses in a nearby street will be open for visitors to see (beautiful Art & Crafts era Grade 3 listed workers terraced cottages) and also the Shoe Museum is open, if I can drag Mum along. So that will provide some interesting photo opportunities to see what it can do