A few reflections on the new camera, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ7K, now that I’ve had nearly a week to fool with it:

I like the image quality, and the 6x zoom is a treat after being used to the 3x of our previous camera. The long shutter settings work well for light painting (though the longest setting is 60 seconds, so it’s probably not well-suited to larger-scale projects). The movie functions are really nice: at the highest image settings one can record up to 20 minutes of continuous 16:9 480p video — more pixels than our dedicated video camera manages to handle. The UI is nice and clean, and a variety of “scene” settings make it easy to compensate for specific conditions. The macro mode works well, and captures a lot of detail. Additionally, the camera registers itself as a bulk storage device when connected via USB, so one doesn’t need any special software to download images and video — just drag and drop the images.

On the less positive side, there’s no audio when you play back video on the camera. This seems slightly ridiculous, since there’s already a speaker in the camera for its various beeps. Fortunately, the audio comes through fine when you play the video on a computer. The tripod mount is set far to the left, rather than in the center of the camera, which is a bit clumsy. Annoyingly, Panasonic seems to have done away with the exposure bracketing between the last revision of the camera and this, so I’ll still have to do HDR photos the hard (and unreliable) way. And finally, it only supports USB 1.1, which makes for painfully slow downloads when you’re using multiple gigabyte memory cards.

But overall, I’m quite happy with the new camera. It’s not the end-all be all of photographic bliss, but a pretty solid little performer for the price. I’ve put up two new images on Flickr already — more should be coming soon. (I expect there will be lots of interest at the Wiener Dog Races in Buda this weekend…)

Lots going on: I took Abigail and Maggie down to the river Saturday morning for the San Marcos River Spring Cleanup. After breakfast tacos, we wandered the banks for about 2.5 hours gathering up debris of various descriptions. Maggie spotted a beautiful hawk, and Abby found an egg that had dropped from a tree but survived intact. We all came home with an assortment of door prizes after lunch. It was a great time, and something I think we’ll turn into a family activity next time it comes around.

I did music for church this weekend, which went well. I think I’m getting over my nervousness about leading music at church; though I still don’t actively enjoy doing it, the dread has mostly abated. We had a new singer who worked out wonderfully, and I got to read pennywhistle music for the first time in a couple of years for the offering.

Finally, I slipped off Saturday night to hear O’Malarkey, San Marcos’ only Irish band. I honestly wasn’t expecting great things, but was very pleasantly surprised by the groups musicianship and polish. One particular highlight was the “Arkansas Bagpipe”, which consisted of two harmonicas duct taped together with a length of surgical tubing leading from one to several huge balloons. When the valve was released, the balloons powered a drone on the lower harmonica while the musician played melodies on the top — a brilliant bit of musical hackery. I also got to enjoy the company of Michael & Nikki, a couple who moved in across the street a few months back and who came out for the show. I enjoyed it a great deal, even though I did feel obliged to brush my teeth when I got home since my dentist plays in the band.

Best quote of the weekend:

“I’ve got a money-pooping llama! I’m going to be a millionaire!” -Abigail

Some of my obsessive fans out there in Internetland may have noticed that the “Recent Photos” sidebar hasn’t been showing anything…well, recent. This has mostly been due to the perfect storm of hardware failures: both my trusty, dusty iMac, where iPhoto lived, and our long-suffering, often-dropped Canon A75 recently shuffled off this mortal coil.

Half of those obstacles should soon be a thing of the past, as I put in an order for a new camera last night. My self-imposed rules for the hunt: 1. I must be able to get it for less than $200 after tax, title, and license 2. It must do as much of the wacky stuff I wanted to try but couldn’t convince the A75 to do as possible.

After a good deal of futzing around on Amazon and the excellent Steve’s Digicams, I finally settled on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ7K, which I got for a grand total of $188. Stuff I liked about it:

• 6x optical zoom with optical image stabilization. Should be excellent for taking clear shots, even from a distance.
• 7 megapixel for ridiculous enlargements or decent crops.
• A shutter-priority shooting mode with shutter speeds of up to 60 seconds. Should be great for taking pictures of the stars at night (which are big and bright here in the heart of Texas) and for Light Painting, which I’ve been keen to try.
• Automatic exposure bracketing for doing High Dynamic Range photography. With the A75, I had to adjust the exposure manually, which always meant the images were slightly out of alignment from my jostling.
• 16×9 30FPS video capture means I may be able to get away with just carrying this when I’m doing vacation photography, rather than hauling both a still and a video camera around.

I’m quite looking forward to trying out the new camera. I’ll post a follow-up once I’ve had a chance to play with it a fair bit.