Fuji Trying out a 10 year old Fujifilm HS30EXR superzoom bridge camera

melanie.ylang

Veteran
Location
Australia
Here are some words that come to mind, when I think of a superzoom, in roughly this order: fun, zoomy, miraculous, versatile, compromised, frustrating, disappointing. But I still went and touched the hot wire! Feeling equally bored and inquisitive, I recently bought a used HS30EXR to play around with, knowing it was destined to be all those words previously mentioned.

The only other superzooms I have had were Panasonic Lumixes: a TZ80 and FZ300, both with the tiniest of noisy sensors, and they were fun to use, but ultimately disappointing. But this one has a (faintly larger) 1/2" sensor, so surely it should be MUCH BETTER! Well, no, of course it isn't. But it IS fun, and having a long-burning fire for Fujifilm cameras (especially a manual zoom on a compact, like my beloved X30) it couldn't really be helped.

As with other photographic genres, I have idle fancies of being a "bird photographer", despite not having the patience for good fieldcraft. Fortunately, where I live there are lots of wild birds; unfortunately for me, these wild birds aren't generally keen on being spied on with humans holding a weird, big, black "eye", and fly off with little provocation.

Poking about my yard, I encountered some mid-afternoon-sleepy sulfur-crested cockatoos, who did tolerate my nosiness. I tried shooting JPEG (I'm not a RAW shooter, please don't even suggest it), Medium size, EXR, or Program or Shutter priority, continuous frame low or medium. Here are some edited results in the next post.
 
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The first photo is unedited for reference. The rest were edited in Snapseed app on a Samsung tablet. Most were shot at or near full zoom.
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Like you Melanie, I've had closet musings of being a wildlife photographer, but I also don't like to sit and wait. I've tried carrying different Fuji cameras with either a 50-230 or 55-200 in my handlebar bag, but those combinations are just not bike friendly. So I either stick with my Olympus camera with a short zoom, or I carry my own X30.
 
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