Happy, happy new camera!

I've lost count of the number of years I've salivated over professional digital SLR cameras. So long, in fact, that DSLR technology has passed and gone. The pro cameras these days are mirrorless -- so I managed to miss an entire generation of technology. But --

There's something to be said for patience. The technology came of age, matured, had its bugs shaken out ... and the price came down. I won't say mirrorless cameras are cheap -- they're not, and they're never going to be -- but they're affordable enough, in a sale... 

...and at the same time, the technology matured enough for enormous, gallumphing devices (that's not a word, but it ought to be) of yesteryear to become small enough for a person with extremely small hands, like mine, to be able to manage the camera easily, comfortably. I like it!

It would be pretty fair to say that Dave got sick enough and tired enough of me moaning about the shortcomings of the Lumix FZ-80 to take the initiative: save up for six months or whatever, and get a Canon EOS R50 kit, which included the body plus two lenses. Now, I'm not going to knock the FZ80 too much. It is what it is: a superzoom bridge, with all that means. When you want a 1200mm zoom lens on a semi-affordable (read: under a grand) digital camera that is small enough to use 100% handheld while hiking -- well, when you ask for all that, and the Lumix FZ80is what you get. But. But...but...

The FZ80 has a phenomenal reach, at 1200mm, and it's light enough to carry, and it costs around $900. Those are the high points, and if you want a superzoom bridge at a price you can afford -- take the good stuff and accept the rest with a smile. But there's rather a lot about the camera that could have been better, and I have to wonder why Panasonic pulled up short of building a truly amazing camera. The processor is so slow that it takes a couple of seconds between shots. If you're photographing crashing surf or birds, this can be a serious problem, because the time lag is enormous, when the subject is moving so fast...

...and, sure, you can shoot on burst mode. But with several shots in the buffer, the time lag while the sloooow processor saves multiple images is painful. Your bird has flown away, gone, before you can get another shot. So, don't use burst. I would have to guess that putting a faster processor into the build would have added $200 to the price of the camera, and given the FZ80's other shortcomings, this might have made for marketability concerns. The second issue I have with the FZ80 is that the available, useful ISO is just not enough. So many times, I put the camera away because the day was too dim, or twilight had come on. Above ISO 400 -- forget it. The images are so grainy, you might as well not bother. Yet, at 400, in low light conditions, you end up with huge apertures and impossibly long shutter speeds. 1/8th of a second? That's too long, even for me. I can hold a camera steady at 1/15th of a second, but not 1/8th. Dang.

This shot, above, was done at 1/15th ... nice water blur, at Byards, two days after I got the Canon. And yes, the Lumix would have done this, but you'd have run into the last of the problems I have with is ... and it's not the Lumix's fault!! There's nothing Panasonic can do to change the laws of optics, and physics! To get a 1200mm zoom lens, you need to put a shedload of lenses in front of the virtual film plane, and this gives you a soft image. A very soft image at the best of times. Long shutter speeds and/or big apertures are going to exacerbate the soft-image problem. Result: yes, you'll get a picture, and I've done it many times. You'll also have a lot of work to do in Photoshop, to get a usable image, and sometimes, you just can't get one. Trying to photograph a dawn or sunset, for instance, all those lens elements fill the picture with pink beachballs ... lens flare. It could be the lens coating, but I doubt it; I'm sure it's just a trade-off for the extremely long zoom, and -- nope. Not even Photoshop can get the pink beachballs out of the shot.  So --

--so, why didn't Panasonic provide a useful ISO range? Something to do with the processor again? Some things, they can't change -- like the trade-off of swapping 1200mm of zoom for tack-sharp pictures. But a useful ISO range, and a faster processor, would have made the FZ80 a camera that was actually worth $1,100, whereas at $900, it tends to be a bit of a "one-trick pony." Meaning, its forte is longshots, birding, wildlife at a great distance, and in great lighting conditions, without a weight penalty or price penalty. That's what it was made for, and it does it well Take it off that work, and you might be left moaning and groaning as often as not, because it's a specialist, not an all-rounder -- ah! --

Yes. As I said, Dave was sick and tired enough of listening to the aforesaid moaning and groaning. Result: Canon EOS R50. Small enough to fit my hand perfectly. Powerful enough that ... if there is a weakness to it so far, I haven't found it -- aside from the unavoidable facts of photographic life: when you run  zoom lens to 100% maximum, you will soften the image. That's just how it is, and there's no way around it. Now, the R50 kit has two lenses, both modest zooms: 18-45mm and 55-210mm. Both useful ... and the wide-angle is pretty fabulous for landscapes ... the telephoto is not quite long enough to permit full-pro birding, unless the bird is pretty darned close. Like, sitting on the end of the lens! 

Having said that -- yes, of course I'm using it for birding. At 25MP, there's enough depth in the mages for me to crop deeply inside them, and I judge that, quality wise, I'm within 15% of what a pro would achieve with a looooong lens and good light. And because the mirrorless is a body + lenses, I have the option of adding on a longer lens. Ah! But not a zoom, which will run out to max and soften the images again, right? A fixed lens ... say, 400mm ... and a 2x or 3x teleconverter, which will take me to 800mm or right back to 1200mm, without a whole bunch of lenses in front of the virtual film plane. 

Well, that's for next year, or even the year after. I'm tickled pink to be able to get great landscapes again, and I will grab the FZ80 in its right time and place. When you're wanting to photograph birds, you want the long zoom. When you're looking at capturing landscapes, you want something like the 18-45mm wide-angle. All in all... oh, yes, I'm happy. Tickled pink. Happy new camera!! And thank you, thank you, to my one and only!

Random beauty ... to cheer myself up.

Need to cheer myself up. Have just spent an hour reading the international news, and it's enough to make you shoot yourself, if only to make it go away. In last week's Advertiser, South Australia was described as a "happy island of safety in a troubled world," and the fact is, it's easy -- far too easy -- to sit here in the Adelaide suburbs and be oblivious to what's happening in the US, UK and parts of (though not all of) Europe. Once you get your teeth into the news and start to digest what's going on elsewhere ... well, "depressing" is an understatement. So --

Random beauty, to cheer myself up before I get back to work. I've a book to write, and I can't tackle it it in this frame of mind (thank you, facebook).

There's been times in the past when South Australia has, admittedly, been a place I only wanted to leave. My personal talents lie in writing, and before the Internet, it was extremely hard to get anyone overseas (publishers, editors, agents) to even acknowledge the fact one existed, with an Australian address -- and not even a Sydney address, at that. 

For a considerable time, I'd thought the only way to get ahead was to leave; and in fact by 1995 I'd put out the feelers, made the first tentative explorations. Of course it came to nothing ... and in the fullness of time, it's probably all for the best.

If my efforts, twenty-five years ago, had borne fruit, I'd right now be living in America. Sure, married to Dave -- and the both of us at "ground zero," where people en masse don't seem to want to believe that the pandemic is real. Reading the news, as I did this morning, is a salutary experience. A wake-up of sorts. Not quite out of the blue, one comes to realize that one is, simply stated, better off right where one already is...

...and sure, of course it's still true that it would be far easier to float a career as a writer in a place where you can walk into the editor's office, "do lunch," help to launch and promote a work via book signings and so forth. But it's important to add that the chances of actually scoring that agent, a publisher, this hypothetical ad campaign, remain at about 10%, maybe 20%, if I work hard and long enough. Meanwhile the threat of this pandemic means that people sitting at ground zero in a country where almost half of the population still doesn't believe it's happening, and therefore isn't doing one skinny iota to stop it ...

Well, now.

At this time I have two books finished and a third approaching finished, two drafts for two more books to be worked up, hopefully by the end of the year; and a fantasy trilogy to finish only after I've completed a stand-alone fantasy which can be shown, and hopefully sold, before the trilogy sees light of day. You can't sell a trilogy right off the bat. That's a lot of work already done, and just as much work left to do.

Mike and I are pretty much decided, it's a waste of time trying to secure agency representation and/or sell books before the pandemic is finished and the global economy is at least showing some signs of recovery. Until major publishers know the state of their own health, they won't be ready to take risks on unknown quantities ... new writers. So --

So ... "a happy island of safety in a troubled world," is it? Those words are very true. I weigh them
against "the future that might have been," if I'd gone through with plans, pushed and insisted, stomped my food and demanded to leave SA. Hmm.

All of which brings me back to where I began. The news is appalling, surreal, depressing. I only look at it about once a week; that's all I can bear. My heart goes out to Americans, British and certain Europeans (and I include Russia there) who're living with the reality, wrestling daily with their governments and also their brainless populations, who seem bent on mass destruction. And as for myself? Well, we've been in SA almost fifty years now. We can wait till this catastrophe sorts itself out before waving our arms around, trying to attract the attention of an American or English agent ...

On the understanding that this pandemic will end, that this virus can be defeated, that the world has a "global" future rather than finding itself a patchwork of isolated Covid-free regions and red-flagged no-go zones, suffering under a shambolic economy that can't fix itself. I don't even want to think about that. No one does. But I can't help wondering how many people must die before the general public in some of the sillier parts of the world wake up to themselves.

Hence, random beauty, to cheer myself up.

The Magic of Rain

A few weeks ago Dave and I went for the hike around the Bayards Road Wetlands (otherwise and more prosaically known as the "Reynella East stormwater catchment area"), with the idea of perhaps seeing and photographing some birds ... and when we arrived, the ponds were bone dry and cracked! We were making jibes about "Sub-Saharan Africa," on some of the cracked-mud shots. We've waited a long time for decent rains to get here -- but they did at last! And this is the result.

Most of the ponds are brimming; one is low and one is empty, held in reserve. This really is a stormwater catchment area -- only seven years old, not a natural lake, though you might not believe it. Walking here, you can lose sight of the surrounding suburb, see no hint of houses or school or road, but in fact you're never more than a few hundred meters away from that road and school. The water flow here is controlled -- but the birds and frogs don't mind a bit.

Today, the cormorants are back, which tells you there's something to fish for. Frogs are croaking enthusiastically; several kinds of parrots have settled in the area, and the waterfowl are in their element. I managed to get good shots of a pied cormorant, an Australian white ibis, Eurasian coots, Pacific Black ducks --

The last two pictures, today, are purely for interest. The flock of yellow tailed black cockatoos went overhead, but they *don't* photograph well at a distance: they're BLACK, against a bright sky, LOL. And the last photo of all isn't actually a good photo (the bird was too far away, even for this camera and its Leica zoom), but I'm including it because you so rarely see this bird. It's an Australasian Grebe. There were three on one pond, that I saw. Next time, they might be closer to shore, and I might be able to get better images. So --

Bayards Wetlands with water (!), and a few of the birds making their home among the reed beds...