melanie.ylang
Top 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.
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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