Panasonic TZ40 and state of the art

colonel

Regular
Location
London
For many years in my photo hobby I have striven for higher and higher clarity. After using Leica M extensively and the wonderful D800E I have now settled on a sony RX1 for most of my needs, a Fuji X-E1 for portrait and a canon EOS 3 for mucking around with film.

I was in costco this weekend and saw the TZ40. Well I was looking for a long zoom, about to get the fuji 55-200mm and I wondered what the state of compact cameras is these days, so one mysteriously appeared in my cart ;)

All I can say is very impressed. Pretty sharp and not that much noise at ISO 800 even in dim light at web type resolutions (e.g. 1280). The lens seems very good and the thing is so small and light, a real miracle.

wifi is a real laugh. so I set it to upload instantly a 3mb size photo to picassa and flickr, just great fun. I have even scratched the surface of the wifi capabilities as there is an app I can get for my HTC One which can control it remotely.

In good light outdoors, this could be the only holiday camera you ever need. there is even a waterproof housing for it!

Definitely found a place in my photo bag for long zoom. The amount of times I actually need it I probably will drop the the Fuji 55-200mm now.
 
I had a play with the remote control app on my Android phone; it's really good fun. I can see this being used to get some good close-ups of garden birds - just set it up on a hidden tripod and control it with the phone.
 
Back
Top