October 2018

04 Oct Pocket Eye

Posted at 08:59h in Blog, Dick's Rant by Uncle Dick 0 Comments [social_share]

Eye Eye, Captain. Sorry about the tortured jokes, but the weather is cold and we've run out of rum. The reason the word " eye " has been mentioned is that the camera today - the Panasonic Lumix TZ90 - has a real live viewfinder for your eye - as well as a fully tilting 180º LCD screen. This is still a pocket camera - though like the Nikon Coolpix A900 it has bumps and protuberances. You'll not get it in your jeans pockets but the good old sports coat inside pocket is fine. You'll note the metallic grey finish - sort of halfway between the silver of the Canon and the black of the Nikon. You'll also note the 30X Leica zoom lens, onboard flash, manual focusing for macro shots, 4K video, and the first of the really useful thumb rests. PASM and art filters to while away time with. What you won't see is the post-shooting focus ability - this camera can take multiple frames to let you select the peak of focus. It can also take stop motion animation. And...

03 Oct Small Pocket

Posted at 21:50h in Blog, Dick's Rant by Uncle Dick 0 Comments [social_share]

The days of the good old compact camera are numbered, they tell me - but then they have told me that you can't get film any more and we have fridges full of fresh stocks of it. And people buy it by the bagful...

03 Oct Cool Pocket

Posted at 07:34h in Blog, Dick's Rant by Uncle Dick 0 Comments [social_share]

The Coolpix model name was a brilliant piece of branding by Nikon - if there was ever any word that would work on the mind of the young and hip, it was that. This camera lives up to it. The portability of the Nikon Coolpix 900 is not as good as the previous little pocket - it has more bulk in all dimensions when closed and more controls protrude from the surfaces. But it also contains more actual machinery and capability: 35 X zoom lens, larger sensor, onboard flash that rises away from the lens axis, 4K video, the ability to access PASM settings, 180º flipping LCD screen, and the Snapbridge circuits to connect it easily to smart mobile devices. You can change image sizes and formats, change ISO and white balance, and do many of the photographer things that you've become used to in your larger camera. Of course the camera has some of the circuitry that modifies images for art effect, as well as a setting that will do most of the scene selection settings for you. Not a feature to...