In the year and a half between my buying the DMC-FZ5 and banging it against the ground in Missouri, Panasonic had been improving the line and dropping the price. In June of 2007, I was able to buy the latest model, the FZ8, for $340 or roughly fifty dollars less than I’d paid for the FZ5. Resolution was up from 5.0 MP to 7.2 MP and manual focus was added. Overall, the changes were more evolutionary than revolutionary, the size was up just a smidgen, and the weight was still under eleven ounces. I had an even more capable camera and I didn’t have to be completely retrained.

The FZ8 has something called “extended optical zoom” that moves the upper end from 12X to 18X when a smaller picture size is used. I’ve always shot at the highest resolution so have never used this extended mode. Maybe I should try it. That’s a whopping 648mm (35mm equivalent) at maximum zoom.

I use past tense to talk about acquiring the FZ8 but present tense to talk about using it. This five year old camera still sees a lot of action although its service hasn’t been entirely uninterrupted. About six months into its life, it got dropped onto the concrete floor of the garage. The distance was only a few inches but the concrete didn’t give at all. The result was an FZ8 whose functionality matched my FZ5. The lens was jammed and powering on the camera was futile. There was one big difference between the two, however. The FZ8 was still in warranty.

I believe I had to pay for shipping to the repair center and there was no guarantee that repair would be covered or even possible. The camera was gone for several weeks and. for a variety of marginally valid reasons, I bought a replacement while it was in the shop. But it did come back with a note about something with a big name being replaced and it has worked flawlessly ever since.

The premature “replacement” was an SLR which will appear in the next My Gear installment. It was a relatively small SLR but it was still considerably heavier and bulkier than the Panasonic. The FZ8 is small and light enough to use easily with one hand and its image stabilization may even help a little with those one-handed driving-down-the-road shots. That is also one of the few situations where being able to switch from the viewfinder to the 2.5 inch LCD is useful. Like the FZ5, the FZ8 fits into a belt bag and it often goes with me, quite unobtrusively, into restaurants and such. Many of the food filled plates that appear in the trip journals were captured with the Panasonic. A few were even captured on the built in memory. It’s only about 27 MB but that’s enough to record a few pictures and save me a walk to the car when I’ve forgotten to check that a memory card is in place.

My Gear – Chapter 11 — Garmin Quest

Unlike most of my camera purchases, the Panasonic DMC-FZ5 was not a replacement but an addition. The Canon A75 was still functioning and I intended it to be my “pocket camera”. That didn’t last long. After the cap popped off of the shutter button, taking a picture required pushing something into the small hole that had been below the cap. Although the camera otherwise functioned quite well, digging up and inserting a paper clip for every picture was a serious impediment to spontaneity. In March of 2006, I gave the A75 away and, still believing I needed a true pocket camera, bought a slightly used Nikon Coolpix 3200 for $70. The model had been on the market for a couple of years with an initial list price around $300. It runs on good old AA batteries, uses SD memory, and even has some built-in memory to store several images if necessary. It has 3.2 megapixel resolution and a a 3X zoom. Particularly endearing to me is the fact that it has something becoming quite rare in small digital cameras: a viewfinder.

I still have the 3200 and it still works. I still carry it in my computer bag but it has been a long time since I slipped it into a pocket. One reason is that the FZ5 and its immediate successor fit comfortably in a belt bag that I wear a lot. A second is that cell phone cameras have long been capable of meeting my “I’d rather have a crappy picture than no picture” requirements. I have a vague recollection of actually using a cell phone photo in a trip report but I can’t remember what it was so maybe I really didn’t.

I have used quite a few pictures from the 3200. In the days before I realized how easy it was to carry the FZ5 in the belt bag, the 3200 was in my pocket a lot and got used a little. Then, on a trip in Missouri, it got a field promotion to Number One Image Recording Device.

It was the third day of a four day outing on Boone’s Lick Road. The FZ5 came with a fairly nice neck strap but that seemed unnecessarily awkward to me so I fitted the lightweight Panasonic with a wrist strap. The strap was around my right wrist and the camera in my hand as I headed down the path to the spring at Boone’s Lick. The path was basically dirt and gravel but there were a few wood fronted steps at the steeper parts. It had been raining, the wood was wet, and I slipped on one of the steps. No prizes will be awarded for guessing which hand I used to catch myself or what I banged against the ground. The lens had been extended and that’s the way it has stayed to this very day. Cycling power on the camera triggers a soft whir as it attempts to retract the lens but it soon gives up and shuts down.

The little 3200 answered the call and performed admirably through the remainder of the trip. Among the images it captured are the only pictures I have of the Missouri Madonna of the Trail Monument in Lexington.

My Gear – Chapter 8 — Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5

I acquired some new gear today by joining the Mug Club at the Flipdaddy’s down the street; The one with 36 taps. There’s no price break but member’s mugs are several ounces larger than the standard glasses which means I can now get drunker and fatter at no extra cost.

This was my 2005 Christmas present to myself. It was clearly a step up in many regards but it was also a step away from some characteristics I’d cherished in my previous digital cameras. The change in form is significant. Although the Lumix DMC-FZ5’s height and width were each but a fraction of an inch larger than the Canon A75, its depth was well over double that of the Canon; 3.3 inches vs. 1.26 inches. This was not a camera to slip into a jeans pocket as was my habit. Another big difference bordered on sacrilege. This new acquisition used box shaped proprietary batteries. No more gas station plastic-wrapped alkaline safety net.

I did not give up these things lightly. Even though my insistence on AA battery powered gadgetry had rarely paid off it did provide peace of mind. Claims that the proprietary batteries were good for 300 pictures on a charge were reassuring and I bought peace of mind by immediately adding two spare batteries and an AC/DC charger.

The size thing, however, meant real compromise. I had found myself wanting a longer lens more and more often. The fairly new class of cameras called compact super zooms tugged at that want. Canon, Nikon, Sony, and others all had them. When a co-worker brought in his Sony DSC-H1 to “show & tell” I was impressed and started shopping. The DMC-FZ5 got my attention right away. With the exception of the one dimension, it was barely larger than my Canon A75 and less than a half ounce heavier. Any one who has seen my trip reports knows that I like to shoot pictures of the road ahead. One handed over the windshield when I can; Through it when I can’t. The lightweight Panasonic was a good fit for that sort of thing and the fact that it had image stabilization was a definite plus.

There was also a change in recording media but it was hardly traumatic. The Agfa 780c had used something called Smart Media. The two Canons used Compact Flash. The Panasonic required SD (Secure Digital). None of these devices are terribly expensive. Buying a couple new cards when you buy a new camera won’t bump the bill significantly and you will probably want to buy a card or two even if your old ones are compatible with the new camera. Why? Because they’ve probably shrunk. They still contain the same number of megabytes or gigabytes but the new camera likely produces larger picture files so that those megabytes and gigabytes fill up faster. Files from the 5 megapixel Panasonic  were considerably larger than those from the 3.2 megapixel Canon so I had no qualms about buying different — and higher capacity — media cards.

A longer lens was the reason I first started thinking about this sort of camera. The 12X zoom on the FZ5 was the 35mm equivalent of 36-432mm. It was made by Leica and that probably sold me as much as anything. A digital camera is made of electronics and optics. Panasonic makes some good electronics. Leica makes some great optics. This could be a decent camera.

It was. I was very pleased with my Christmas present even though it had a price tag right at $400. My faith in digital photography had grown significantly. Like much of the world, I was starting to believe that it might really have a shot at replacing film. I still didn’t have a camera that could do magazine covers but this one could do the stuff between them just fine.

My Gear – Chapter 7 — Canon Powershot A75

The need for spare batteries coupled with my bargain seeking tendencies led me to an independent vendor with whom I continue doing business to this day. He is an eBay merchant named OrphanBiker. The name comes, not from the seller being an orphan himself, but from his being attracted to unusual motorcycles that some call orphans.
“…the more obscure the better” is how he describes his taste in bikes.

My first order, placed the same day I bought the FZ5, was for those two batteries and charger I mentioned. Admittedly, a charge on these batteries did not last quite as long as with the genuine Panasonic version but they otherwise worked just as well and cost considerably less. The charger I liked much more than the one that came with the camera. It was a small cube with a foldaway AC plug and a detached cable for DC operation. I have since gone to OrphanBiker for batteries and chargers for other cameras and chargers for cell phones. The only problems I’ve ever experienced have been internal breaks in a couple of the cables after a year or two of use. People who don’t twist, pull, kink, and pinch their cables like I do probably won’t see even that.

Late in the spring of 2004, the lens on my A20 zoomed its last. As I recall, it was stuck somewhere in the middle of its range. It still took pictures but the lack of zoom was irritating and the permanently protruding lens made it awkward to pocket. Besides, there had been three years of progress since my last camera purchase and I was ready to take advantage of it.

I had been quite happy with the A20 so I went for what was essentially the current model equivalent. But those three years had not only added about a million pixels, available manual controls, and video recording to the camera, they also shaved more than a hundred bucks off the price. The A20 had cost $384 in 2001. The A75, in June of 2004, was $276.

The lens was the same 35mm-105mm zoom and the recording media was still Compact Flash. More importantly, power still came from standard AA batteries. I owned several gadgets — GPS, voice recorder, FRS radios — that used AAs and I owned a couple fist fulls of rechargeables along with an AC/DC charger. Plus, in my mind, it was crucial to use standard batteries so I could grab fresh ones at any gas station if necessary. In my five years with the Powershots and seven years with an AA powered Garmin, I think I did that maybe twice with the cameras and once with the GPS. Of course, the GPS was usually powered directly from the car so one set of batteries was almost always being charged.

I guess it was this camera that got me to thinking that digital photography might actually have a future. Until now, I figured digital cameras were great for pictures to post on a website or email to friends and relatives but film was still needed for any kind of printing. The A75 couldn’t produce magazine cover images but a 3×5 or 4×6 print looked just fine.

My Gear — Chapter 6 — HP Pavilion ze4000