I’ve been wanting a camera with a bigger zoom lens for a while… and I’ve been wanting a camera with more features and controls… and I felt that a trip to a place like Russia called for a camera that could take it all in. So today I picked up the ***Panasonic DMC-FZ20|http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/vModelDetail?displayTab=O&storeId=11251&catalogId=11005&itemId=71418&catGroupId=17168&modelNo=DMC-FZ20K&surfModel=DMC-FZ20K*** at Circuit City in Salem, NH. I had ordered it on the web a few days ago for in-store pickup. That way, I was able to get the web price ($30 cheaper than in-store), and by picking it up in New Hampshire I avoided both sales tax and shipping.

The biggest improvement with this new camera is the huge zoom lens – 12x zoom (36mm-432mm). It also has an optical image stabilizer, which helps cut down on image blurring when taking hand-held shots. You can read all of the rest of the specs and features at the above link if you’re interested.

To see just what a 12x zoom means, here’s an example:

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Shot with no zoom

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Shot with 12x zoom (zoomed in to books from the center of the previous frame)

Pretty big difference! Having a big zoom lens opens up all sorts of possibilities… better candid shots, better framing and composition, bringing distant or unreachable subjects closer. Anyway, here’s the camera itself (taken with its little sidekick, the Powershot A70):

ggg|grab_bag/IMG_0237|DMC-FZ20|ggg

Next to it is the detatchable lens hood. When in place, this can help eliminate lens glare and protect the lens from the elements.

Right now, I only have the 16 meg SD card that came with the camera. It holds only eight full-quality (5 megapixel) shots. But I have a 512 meg card on order, and that will hold around 250 shots. Hopefully that, in combination with nightly offloading of images onto our laptop, will help us get lots of good photos when we’re in Russia (which is coming in just over six weeks!).

The agreement is that this camera has to last me for a while – I’ve had my Powershot A70 for less than a year and a half. But with the combination of the zoom and the advanced features, I think I’ll be satisifed for a while. I certainly don’t have the money to go and buy a full-fledged digital SLR and an equivalent sized zoom lens to attach to it.

Tomorrow, I’m going to hike around Boston a bit while Becky is at work, to put the camera through its paces. To get any decent number of shots saved on the 16 meg card, I’m going to have to go down to 640×480 resolution… but I’ll deal for now. 🙂

(P.S. The A70 is in perfectly good condition, but I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet. The FZ20 is certainly not a pocket-sized camera, so it would be nice to keep the A70 around for occasions when I didn’t want to lug a larger-sized camera… but on the other hand, the A70 isn’t all that compact. I could probably sell it, along with all of its accessories (batteries, charger, compact flash cards – all of which are unfortunately useless with the new camera). Eventually I’d like to get a truly pocket sized camera that could go everywhere, and ditch the in-between awkwardness of the A70 altogether…)

I took this photo on Monday morning, upon arriving at work on the first day after the blizzard. You can see about half of our building peeking above the massive snowbanks made by the plows. That’s a lot o’ snow. 🙂

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It has been really, really foggy today. Pretty much the whole day. The entire North Shore (and, from what I’ve heard, much of the Northeast) has been blanketed in a thick fog. I took some photos today around work and at home, and tossed them in the ***grab bag|http://gallery.prwdot.org/grab_bag***. Here are a few selections:

ggg|grab_bag/IMG_9788|Foggy view of CBD|ggg

ggg|grab_bag/IMG_9787|Foggy field at CBD|ggg

ggg|grab_bag/IMG_9790|Fog behind our apartment|ggg

***Nikkiana|http://everytomorrow.org/***’s photos of the WordPress Meetup are ***now available|http://www.everytomorrow.org/album/Wordpress-Meetup***. Check ’em out! There’s even a few good ones of yours truly. 🙂

Last night after the movies, Becky and I took a chilly but refreshing stroll down to ***Independence Park|http://gallery.prwdot.org/independence_park***. I had hoped to capture some nice night shots, but most of them were disappointing. The area is lit by very bright floodlights at night, which is nice from a pedestrian safety perspective, but is horrible for photography. Anyway, I did manage to get one shot which looks pretty decent, after having been cropped to fit as a banner for our site. See if you can guess which one it is!

I’ve been digging through my offline digital photo library recently, and I’ve ‘found’ some albums that never made it on-line for whatever reason, or were taken off-line a while ago. Here they are for you to peruse:

Mark and Kirsten’s Wedding – took it offline a while ago to save space on the server, now I have plenty of space.
Geoff and Deanna’s Wedding – either I never put it online, or I took it down for some reason a while ago. Now it’s back.
Head of the Charles Regatta, 2001 – previously taken offline due to disk space.
New Year’s Eve 2001 – not sure why this wasn’t online.
Endicott Park – shot this just a few weeks ago, but never got around to putting it online. Enjoy!
Dogs on Singing Beach – guess I just forgot about this one – some frolicking canines on Singing Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea.
Middlesex Fells – may have taken this one down due to disk space.

Also, for those with access to the Family photo area, I have added a few additional albums. Poke around a bit and you’ll find them.

CBD has some surprisingly nice hiking trails winding around in the wooded area behind it, so today on my lunch break I went for a walk and took some photos of the fall foliage.

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I might make another pass later this month, as the foliage isn’t quite at its peak.

I had another exhausting but fun day today as I trekked around Boston. Becky was once again working, so I drove her in and parked for free! Whee!

My picture-taking today was driven by colleges. I’ve spent plenty of time taking pics in the center of Boston, but haven’t branched out as much to the outlying areas. So today I made the rounds to Boston University, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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I took some photos of the schools, as well as some of the surrounding areas. The day was exceedingly clear, which made it very nice to walk around and take in the sights. Unfortunately, the lack of any kind of light diffusion due to clouds made for not the greatest photography conditions. So I’ve got the best of the bunch online, though I would have liked to take more.

I am now finished with the reorganization of our photo gallery.

Hopefully it will be more manageable for me and easier to browse for you. You can browse an album called ‘Events and Gatherings’ if you’re looking for party photos, event photos, or that sort of thing. Or, you can wander around the globe by using the ‘Travels’ album. Admittedly, some of the ‘Travels’ albums are contrived… I created a France album, but the only thing in it is the photos I took when we were at Charles de Gaulle airport for half a day on our honeymoon. Of course, that can just serve as an incentive to go there ‘for real’ some day. 🙂 (Becky has been there with her family, and is much more travelled than I in general. But we don’t have any of her “pre-us” photos online. Yet.)

As always, you may also use the search box at the top of the main gallery page to find specific albums or photos. I’m sure there must be a way to put the search box on every gallery page, so I’ll look into that.

I’ve also attempted to make some album names more uniform, and I’ve split up some albums that were previously together in order to make the fit in the new scheme. If you think something is missing, just let me know.

Go check it out!

I drove in to Boston after church today, and walked around Boston for several hours while Becky was at work (thanks for the free parking!). I didn’t have any particular destination, I just let my camera lens lead me. You can see the results of my trip here.

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My journey started at the Otis House Museum, and I ended up walking along a good stretch of the Charles River Esplanade and the Back Bay. I also took a really excessive number of shots from the demolition of the Green Line right next to North Station. But it was really cool to watch. It’s really amazing to see all of that open space and sunlight (!?) at the Fleet Center.

All in all, it was a really fantastic day for photography, and I think I ended up with a few very nice shots. I hope you enjoy the gallery!

Update: I neglected to mention that I stopped by to see Jackie at her new place in Boston! It just so happens that she was having a problem with her apartment’s wireless network when I stopped by, but unfortunately I was not able to fix it. Someone with more of a clue was able to get it fixed for her later, though!