FreeLists / birdky / [birdky] No Sightings. Camera Recommendation

[Charles Crawford <cr4d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

About a month or so ago I bought a camera to document for myself  
birds I have seen.
I had seen some pictures posted on the web by a birder who used a  
digital camera with 12 optical power.
This got me interested.
I had older Nikon SLR with a small zoom lens and doubler. I was never  
happy with the lack of power and didn't want to invest in the money  
and weight of a high power lens.
I found that Panasonic was coming out with a 18 power optical zoom, 8  
megapixels.
Panasonic Limix DMC-FZ18. Comes in silver or black. I bought through  
Amazon: $249.99.
The lens is made by Leica.
It comes with neck strap, lens cap, lens hood, rechargeable battery,  
recharger, and USB cable.
Naturally the built in memory is not enough. So I bought a 2gig SD card.

It is like a small SLR. Very light weight - great to carry with the  
strap over my left shoulder.
At first the light weight worried me (I'm sure a lot of it is  
plastic.) But, I have dropped it twice on concrete (that really  
scared me when it happened). No problems what so ever!! To protect  
the lens out in the field I keep the lens hood on rather than a lens  
cap that I don't  have to remove and put back on.
Yes it has zooms to 18 power. BUT by changing settings you can  
digitally get up to 115 power. Now the only problem with 115 power is  
actually finding your subject at that small a window on the world.  
And second is the camera jitter.
Fortunately the camera has built in 2 different  stabilizer modes  
that are very effective. Don't expect the picture quality at the  
digital powers to be that great...but I'm not trying to get pictures  
published.
It has a ga-jillion different settings.

I can't cover all it does.

I am very satisfied with this camera.

Just thought I pass this along.

Charlie
Henderson Co.
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