New Camera

OK, folks, I finally got an amazing replacement camera for the high-end Canon point-and-shoot I lost in the parking lot at Sleeping Giant last fall (after dropping it repeatedly while hiking, I confess).  I've been using an old, malfunctioning point-and-shoot, and just had enough of it. Soooo,  here's the Panasonic G-2, one of the new-fangled Micro Four Thirds camera that is basically a very small, light SLR without the interior mirrors.  Wow, so I can take pictures in the shady forest now without a flash.  But I don't have to lug around an SLR. It's about time! This camera is amazing. I had an SLR as far back as High School, before cameras were digital, but held off on getting a DSLR because they were too expensive and snobby (no video, for starters, because "real" photographers wouldn't want to take video). 



The camera has interchangeable lenses, but they're expensive.  The only disappointment has been adapting to the stock lense that can only go from "normal" power to a 3x zoom.  The point-and-shoot camera I had last fall went from super macro to 10x at the touch of a button.  But I am finding I'm getting just as good pictures by using the computer to zoom in and crop. 


The camera is way fun.  It has a touch screen -- touch the part of the view you want to be in focus, or scroll through your pictures like an iTouch. The intelligent mode is good for lazy photographers like me, identifying faces and locking them into focus even as they move around.  Here's a video that shows how that work.