Yep! I've goneandunit!
Posted: November 2nd, 2008, 2:12 pm
For the last 10 months or so I've wanted to acquire a tele-converter lens for my "big camera." Well, I saved my nickels and dimes, and last Sunday ordered my new lens (on line). It was a "happy me" when UPS delivered it Tuesday morning, and I've been waiting for the chance to try it out all week. Early this afternoon, I drove out in the country looking for something to photograph. I found a perfect subject, a guy has built a castle on top of a hill. Surrounded by woods there are not many angles that afford a clear view of the castle, however from a highway overpass 2miles away the top halves of the towers are visible. This is where I set up to take my photographs. These photos are not retouched, they have only been resized so that I could post them on here, and captions added. The first photo is shot with no magnification, you have to look closely to see the towers on the hill in the center of the picture.
The next photo is taken using the standard 12X optical zoom lens on the camera.
The final picture is taken with the teleconverter coupled with the zoom lens to give a total of 20.4X magnification.
This is all optical zoom. Should I combine the optical zoom with the "Extended Digital Zoom" I could get up to 81.6X magnification, but the image would be very degraded. What I had thought from the beginning, did indeed turn out to be true. Taking photographs at these extreme distances requires the use of a tripod and remote shutter control. The converter more than doubles the weight of the camera, and it's a hefty camera to begin with, making it almost impossible to keep the camera perfectly still while depressing the shutter button.
Now, if NASA will just cooperate and have a shuttle launch (preferably at night) when I'm down there this Christmas . . .
TW
The next photo is taken using the standard 12X optical zoom lens on the camera.
The final picture is taken with the teleconverter coupled with the zoom lens to give a total of 20.4X magnification.
This is all optical zoom. Should I combine the optical zoom with the "Extended Digital Zoom" I could get up to 81.6X magnification, but the image would be very degraded. What I had thought from the beginning, did indeed turn out to be true. Taking photographs at these extreme distances requires the use of a tripod and remote shutter control. The converter more than doubles the weight of the camera, and it's a hefty camera to begin with, making it almost impossible to keep the camera perfectly still while depressing the shutter button.
Now, if NASA will just cooperate and have a shuttle launch (preferably at night) when I'm down there this Christmas . . .
TW
it's a Panasonic Lumix FZ30. It's a high-end point and shoot, but it offers the option of manually controlling the aperture, shutter speed, aspect ratio, resolution, and manual or auto focus. It has a built in pop-up flash, but also has a hot shoe for attaching an external flash. It has a 12X telephoto zoom lens standard but has a macro setting for doing close up work. It's a big (physically) camera, that's one reason that I bought it. It feels like a real camera in my hands, not like I was trying to take pictures with a "pregnant credit card." It can do almost everything an SLR can do except change lenses, thus the need for the converter lens which is made to be stackable with the 12X lens on the camera. Next year I plan on getting the wide angle converter lens (also stackable).
