Making a gift

L0n3Gr3yW0lf

Hall of Famer
Location
Somerset, UK
Name
Ovi
I have a resident at work, let's call him Master Chief, that is very VERY excited about making pictures. Some of that is because he can be a bit jealous of the resident that I am responsible for looking after.
But since I am not his key worker I don't have, technically, responsibility for Master Chief's needs. I have tried to get his key worker (currently and the past ones) to get them to buy a camera for Master Chief so he can make pictures but my requests have gone unanswered for almost 2 years. I have tried to get things working with the management but I have gotten so many different answers that they went from "get him anything he needs" to "the budget is 150 £ at most" to "all of it has to be in one payment recipe only" from one month to another.

After being begged by Master Chief to take him out to buy a camera my heart started breaking (like literal physical chest pains from empathy) having to postpone him for so long I decided to take matters into my own hand.

The reason is that Master Chief gets very excited about holding pictures in his hands and wanting to get everyone's attention to the picture he has and often giving it away to others, being staff or his fellow residents. He has a very big and soft heart, he loves my Little Legs and is very happy when I give him prints of her when I use (and have enough reserves) my Fujifilm Instax Wide printer.

Given that I have I'll have to use my own money I was hard capped at 150 to 200 £ at most, more then that and I would have to sacrifice more then I earn. So I pulled extra shifts last month, 190 hours, to have some money to do this.

There are some very specific needs and requirements that made this task more difficult. Master Chief has no mobility in his body beyond moving his head and one arm and limited other arm. His dexterity is also very compromised so he can't hold the camera. He can move around using his motorised wheelchair using his hand.

That made some very specific requirements I need to look for.
*The camera has to have IBIS to make sure that the images will not be blurry, the wheelchair can be wobbly and the table that sits on his lap can giggle.
*The camera needs to have a big and reasonable sharp and easy to see because of his limited body position, minimum 3 inch and 640K or more dots resolution.
*The camera has to have a wired or wireless remote trigger because the only way he can get involved in making the image is by pressing a remote due to his lack of dexterity.
*The camera needs to have a large optical zoom because he frequently goes on trips to zoos, farms and other places and having over 200mm access will allow him to get pictures of animals.
*The camera needs to have 28mm or 24mm for selfies including a flip out screen because he loves having images of himself and with other people, like residents and staff.
*The camera must have an effective Automatic mode to be able to keep the process extremely simple and easy to use for both Master Chief and the staff that may be on the trip with him.
*The camera must have a decent IQ output, enough for a A4 print for him to share with others.

All of this was quite difficult within the budget I had and it limited me to second hand market only.
In the end it came doesn to 2 options that I could find:
*Sony HX200
*Panasonic FZ150
Both being around 100 £ on the used market. But after weeks of looking around everywhere I chanced upon an even better option, the Panasonic FZ200, from Buyee 2nd hand market in Japan.
It was a bit of a gamble because the camera did not come with a charger but the seller said that all the camera functions work. And I managed to win the bid for only 83 £ which was way less then I expected ... But the shipping did cost 5 £ from the seller to Buyee and 23 £ from Buyee (Japan's) to me (UK).

The next step was that I needed to get a USB battery charger for the camera battery (which arrived on Friday), a wired remote shutter (tested it and it works), and a lens cap because the camera came without one (which I am still waiting for).

I tested the camera on Friday and the only bad news is that the camera is in Japanese and no option to change it to any other languages (no firmware hacks either). Apparently Japan was limiting some products to Japanese market by having Japanese language on the device only so people don't buy them and export them cheaper then buying in other countries ... I wish I knew this sooner but it's to late for that now.
Everything came out around 150 £ and all the functions of the camera work, I tested it last night after work. I just need to test it during the day where there's plenty of light and put it in Auto+ to see how it handles it.

After the lens cap arrives I will give it to Master Chief along side my Jobby GorillaPod to have it on his wheelchair table, a selfie stick that a staff member can use to help Master Chief make a selfie and one of my holster camer bag to fit everything but the selfie stick in.

I will refuse any refunds from my workplace for all of this stuff because I know there will be one staff member or management that will complain about doing things on my own and my way, the company I work for I truly despise for their Corporate nature and profits only mindset. I work with people for people, not for effing profits ... But that's privatisation of care in UK I guess (well it's going the same way I'm Romania too).
And besides, while I do have all the recipes, I have no way of putting them in just one bill and I would never be able to find one place to sell all of this with one bill.

But I am happy and proud to bring photography to another soul who enjoys it. It's the least I could do and the most I am seem to be able to do.
 
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First image in the test, and a good example of using the 600mm f 2.8 reach of the camera.

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First worry that I have noticed is that the AF seem to not be to reliable. I have tried to photograph this cat walking to the place where she is sitting right now and of all the images, 5 of them, they were out of focus as the AF seemed to be more interested in the asphalt in front of her. I kind of forgot how the old CDAF seems to be weird at times, especially using all the AF "points".

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The sharpeness is okayu at the 600mm end, at least for a tablet or TV screen and A4 prints. It's a good camera for zoo pictures.

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If I would try to get Master Chief to hold the camera this is probably all the pictures would look like, so I tried it out on my feet.

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The colours are quite Panasonic-y with Auto White Balance but it works quite well when the selcene has a good amount of highlight and shadows to not fool the metering. By the way all these images are RAW edited in Lightroom with my default style (which I apply to the much better OM-1 20 MP images) and Denoised AI. This was more out of curiosity to see how far I can push the old 12 MP CMOS sensor from 2012.

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I quite like how well it renders the greens though, very natural.

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Someone wants to play.

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Who's over there?

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Unlimited energy even though is older then me now, at 49 years old in human years.

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The ball is MINE.

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An excellent case for 24mm wide angle and close focus capabilities plus flip out screen for vertical shooting one handed.

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Someone was getting tired and got after doing a few fetches.

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There's only 2 of them now, something killed the 3rd cygnet.

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I have noticed that the camera seems to prioritise low ISO over shutter speed in Auto ISO and Auto Minimum Shutter no matter what focal length the lens is. While I am sure that the IS in the camera can handle 3-4 stops well but when it comes to motion it's not picking the right shutter speed, which is not great.

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The camera was blinking on the highlights saying they are blown but there's enough DR room to pull most of it back but that's for RAW Ans editing only, need to check the metering behaviour with JPEG output and in Intelligent Auto.

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The camera did pretty well focusing on the weeds on the other side of the train tracks. The little dots are flies floating around and being illuminated by the sunset light from the top left corner

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The DD can easily be pushed past the old sensor but the mid tones hold up really well, the green are quite well saturated, it's only the shadows on the trees in the background that have quite desaturated greens.

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Is the wooden post or is the tree going the wrong way? I don't know anymore.

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When contrast is very low, like this case, the camera did 5 full focus hunts from minimum to infinity and back before it gave up and settled with this which worked.

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Among the street lamps. The look of the image is good but the sharpness is not holding up to well, the focus should be on the 3rd lamp post but it looks a bit soft.
 
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This extremely high contrast situation is handled admirably well for the old sensor and there I very little to complain, if not for a few reflections of the lights on the lamp post, it looks like double reflection from the glass elements. Older Lena coating I'm guessing.

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I was surprised to notice that the camera did not do us on the lamp post as I aimed and hoped for, even though it gave me a green box on it.

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I do like this image but it was a struggle. For some reasons the Panasonic FZ200 was not focusing on the birds at all, there were actually 2 of them but the camera kept missing the focus and even this one is front focused. Still, I like the look of it and I may actually go back to he same spot this evening to try again with my OM-1 because I love the idea of this composition.

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This IS is doing quite well but it's definitely not Dual IS or Sync IS or Olympus 5 Axis IBIS either. I really need to find a way to make sure the shutter speed is not going to go down to much.

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There are quite a lot of house cats roaming around the pond and the grass, probably looking for trouble or easy snacks.

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Some people are just THAT lazy, there's a doggy poop bin about 200 steps away on the opposite side of the pond.

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Duckies at the pond doing their washing and cleaning routine. The AF did well for this situation.

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The lights are turning on.

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The one case where the slower Shutter Speed was helping the story of the image.

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I am glad to see that new neighbourhoods are being built with cyclists in mind as well as pedestrians. In terms of IQ I didn't realise that the sky was that blown out, there is quite a transition from the blueninnthe corner to mid tone gray to pure white.

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I like duck butts and I can not lie.

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Testing out the DoF with this small sensor and 108mm lens, effective 600mm reach. The AF seemed to have struggled even though there is enough contrast between the power line post and the trees in the background.

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Synchronised butting.

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As a wildlife photographer I struggle sometimes to use the wide angle more because I always want the little details. But in truth Master Chief is going to use the camera mainly at 24 to 100mm and that's where the IQ matters more.

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I missed the train but I caught the sunset. The disadvantage of electronic zoom instead of mechanical zoom.

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Testing out the the DR in the RAW file. I exposed for the mid tones to try and recover as much shadow and highlight as the sensor can record. It has done remarkably well and it reminds me of the IQ of the Panasonic G2 I started with back in 2009, not bad.

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Exposing for the shadows has blown the highlights and lost a bit of colour saturation in the sky. The shadow do tend to look noisy and mushy even at base ISO but it's usable with Denoise AI. With these 2 images I have noticed some vignetting on the top right and left corner and worse being on the left side, almost to a mechanical level of light being blocked (the camera did not come with a lens hood so it's not that).

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Childhood memories of fun. And noise test as it was getting quite dark. The focus failed and the swings are out of focus. I haven't mentioned this yet but the lens exhibits moderate levels of CA, more so if you push the shadows in very high contrast scenes. It is fixable but some of it is beyond 10 pixels wide and the lack of information afterwards can be noticeable. Making cropping a no go, even at 12 MP.

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Testing out the colours of these flowers and it came out wonderful. I love this image.

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The train signal lights are a bit soft, not sure if it's miss focused or lack of sharpness.
 
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I pulled up 2 stops of EV and the shadows and the image held up surprisingly well.

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Trying to see the minimum focus distance and magnificatio. It is not great but workable, 2 meters under 600mm and 3 meters at 600mm.

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The camera can compress the background and give quite a lot of blurry background if you get low and there's enough distance between the subject and the background.

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I am quite happy with how the camera rendered the sunset, it has beautiful mix of warm and cold tonesand transitions.

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I waited for the left side duck to finish dunking it's head in the water and start flapping its wings to dry off, having a slow shutter speed I was hoping to get enough motion blur to get motion in it's wings and a sharp right side duck that was just sitting there looking at me.

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At the end I have put the camera in Intelligent Auto without realising that it will shoot JPEG only. So this image was not edited at all, SooC.

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JPEG SooC, doesn't look great. I wish I could deactivate electronic zoom aka cropping in Intelligent Auto and just stay in the 24-600mm f 2.8 range.

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This was the most difficult situation because the camera was lowering the shutter speed so much I couldn't be stable enough to get a sharp image even after multiple tries. I shouldn't be surprised that the camera can't handle such low light which is unfortunate but at least there's a built in flash that can be used if needed.
 
I took the Panasonic FZ200 out for a long walk on Intelligent Auto and just point and shoot. Got quite a few nice keepers. I don't know if anyone would be interested in those images for me to post them.

Today the lens cap and hot shoe cover arrived and I gave the camera to Master Chief. I have never seen him this happy and smile this wide. He said he is very excited to go out to make pictures with his key worker, his fellow peers and with me.

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I gave him a few camera stickers I have laying around and he picked which ones to go on his camera to make it more personalized.

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This was when I showed him the camera for the first time, I noticed a sparkle of excitement in his eyes and the shouted A CEMERA LIKE YOURS.
 
I have a resident at work, let's call him Master Chief, that is very VERY excited about making pictures. Some of that is because he can be a bit jealous of the resident that I am responsible for looking after.
But since I am not his key worker I don't have, technically, responsibility for Master Chief's needs. I have tried to get his key worker (currently and the past ones) to get them to buy a camera for Master Chief so he can make pictures but my requests have gone unanswered for almost 2 years. I have tried to get things working with the management but I have gotten so many different answers that they went from "get him anything he needs" to "the budget is 150 £ at most" to "all of it has to be in one payment recipe only" from one month to another.

After being begged by Master Chief to take him out to buy a camera my heart started breaking (like literal physical chest pains from empathy) having to postpone him for so long I decided to take matters into my own hand.

The reason is that Master Chief gets very excited about holding pictures in his hands and wanting to get everyone's attention to the picture he has and often giving it away to others, being staff or his fellow residents. He has a very big and soft heart, he loves my Little Legs and is very happy when I give him prints of her when I use (and have enough reserves) my Fujifilm Instax Wide printer.

Given that I have I'll have to use my own money I was hard capped at 150 to 200 £ at most, more then that and I would have to sacrifice more then I earn. So I pulled extra shifts last month, 190 hours, to have some money to do this.

There are some very specific needs and requirements that made this task more difficult. Master Chief has no mobility in his body beyond moving his head and one arm and limited other arm. His dexterity is also very compromised so he can't hold the camera. He can move around using his motorised wheelchair using his hand.

That made some very specific requirements I need to look for.
*The camera has to have IBIS to make sure that the images will not be blurry, the wheelchair can be wobbly and the table that sits on his lap can giggle.
*The camera needs to have a big and reasonable sharp and easy to see because of his limited body position, minimum 3 inch and 640K or more dots resolution.
*The camera has to have a wired or wireless remote trigger because the only way he can get involved in making the image is by pressing a remote due to his lack of dexterity.
*The camera needs to have a large optical zoom because he frequently goes on trips to zoos, farms and other places and having over 200mm access will allow him to get pictures of animals.
*The camera needs to have 28mm or 24mm for selfies including a flip out screen because he loves having images of himself and with other people, like residents and staff.
*The camera must have an effective Automatic mode to be able to keep the process extremely simple and easy to use for both Master Chief and the staff that may be on the trip with him.
*The camera must have a decent IQ output, enough for a A4 print for him to share with others.

All of this was quite difficult within the budget I had and it limited me to second hand market only.
In the end it came doesn to 2 options that I could find:
*Sony HX200
*Panasonic FZ150
Both being around 100 £ on the used market. But after weeks of looking around everywhere I chanced upon an even better option, the Panasonic FZ200, from Buyee 2nd hand market in Japan.
It was a bit of a gamble because the camera did not come with a charger but the seller said that all the camera functions work. And I managed to win the bid for only 83 £ which was way less then I expected ... But the shipping did cost 5 £ from the seller to Buyee and 23 £ from Buyee (Japan's) to me (UK).

The next step was that I needed to get a USB battery charger for the camera battery (which arrived on Friday), a wired remote shutter (tested it and it works), and a lens cap because the camera came without one (which I am still waiting for).

I tested the camera on Friday and the only bad news is that the camera is in Japanese and no option to change it to any other languages (no firmware hacks either). Apparently Japan was limiting some products to Japanese market by having Japanese language on the device only so people don't buy them and export them cheaper then buying in other countries ... I wish I knew this sooner but it's to late for that now.
Everything came out around 150 £ and all the functions of the camera work, I tested it last night after work. I just need to test it during the day where there's plenty of light and put it in Auto+ to see how it handles it.

After the lens cap arrives I will give it to Master Chief along side my Jobby GorillaPod to have it on his wheelchair table, a selfie stick that a staff member can use to help Master Chief make a selfie and one of my holster camer bag to fit everything but the selfie stick in.

I will refuse any refunds from my workplace for all of this stuff because I know there will be one staff member or management that will complain about doing things on my own and my way, the company I work for I truly despise for their Corporate nature and profits only mindset. I work with people for people, not for effing profits ... But that's privatisation of care in UK I guess (well it's going the same way I'm Romania too).
And besides, while I do have all the recipes, I have no way of putting them in just one bill and I would never be able to find one place to sell all of this with one bill.

But I am happy and proud to bring photography to another soul who enjoys it. It's the least I could do and the most I am seem to be able to do.
Great, mate!

The bill.

Do one account from yourself for all the amounts, itemized.

Attach copies of the original receipts (NOT the original receipts!) to your account, using two staples in the top LH corner.

Deliver your account, with attached receipts, to your workplace.
 
Hi Ovi, I applaud your generosity and hope Master Chief is getting on well with his FZ200. I'm a big fan of bridge cameras. I know they don't, and likely never will give the IQ of my m4/3 bodies and lenses but they sure are a lot easier to carry. One thing I've found with all my Panasonics is their 'out the box' factory settings can be cr*py. If the FZ200 has it and you can find it in the Japanese menu first thing to try is turning the NR to its lowest setting or off as I found that helps with the soft images, it certainly did on my FZ2000. Also, if you are not already aware, there is a guy called Graham Houghton on YouTube who has done loads of guide videos on the FZ200 (and many other bridge cameras). Search him by name and look in his playlists. He also has a link on his channel to his website which has more info that may help you and Master Chief get the best out of the camera.
All the best and stay safe.
 
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