Gardening diaries - friendly discussions on topics from latest bloom to wildlife.

Hi @Perki

When you upload the photos, they will appear as a list below the textbox where you enter your reply - to the right hand side of each, there is the option to insert as a thumbnail or as a full imate - full image is best, but I would recommend pressing the return key a couple of times between each to separate them.

 

My pleasure. If you have any other questions or problems, just ask. You will find (if you haven't already done so) that the members here are absolutely top-notch, and they are always more than happy to help. We like to keep things quite relaxed and informal too, so don't be shy about giving one of the staff a shout if you need help

 

It's a fairly basic bridge camera (if anything is basic now ). It's a Panansonic Lumix FZ28 and I'm sure it has been out of production for some time. I bought it nearly 10 years ago. Being a bridge camera you can't use different lenses on it but it looks a little bit like an SLR. It has an optical zoom X18 plus a digital zoom x10. It also has a number of settings - Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Scenery settings, Sport settings etc. plus a number of programmable settings, but I just keep it on Intelligent Auto. In other words, just point and shoot with a bit of zooming in or out.

I used to love my old manual SLR but it got too heavy to lug around with all the different lenses. So I went for a simple solution. When we used to go out all day with cameras (holidays etc.) I found the SLR used to give me backache and shoulder ache (it's an age thing ). Now all I need to do is to slip it into the carrying case that sits on my belt. It doesn't weigh much. It's good enough for me.

 

@alp - I am reasonably comfortable with Panasonic models; if you can give me the model number, I will have a look and see what it's capabilities are, and what you might want to try to improve picture quality?

Panasonic cameras are generally very good indeed (they have made the odd howler over the years, but then almost every manufacturer has!).

 

Ah, that explains a lot - it is a camcorder as opposed to a stills camera; to be fair, it was a cracker of a camcorder in its day, but it has been designed predominantly to take video footage, with still images being a nice sideline; a bit of a Jack of all trades, if you know what I mean?

It is worth having a look through the menus to make sure that the image resolution is set to the highest setting, and also to see if there is a way to set the White Balance - if there is, use a piece of clean white paper to set the White Balance on it; this tells the camera what white 'looks' like, and from there it can work out all the other colours.

Failing that, if you really want to go for a better stills camera for the best photos, I would recommend anything from Panasonic, Sony or Canon. The world really is your oyster when it comes to choice. @ARMANDII is a wizard when it comes to lenses and fittings, should you go for a SLR style camera, and @Marley Farley and @wiseowl are both also keen photographers who will give you sound advice.