In preparation for my ‘bucket list’ trip to the NZ and the US in October/November, when I *know* I’ll be taking lots of photos , I decided to upgrade my digital camera (I had a Canon IXUS 400 that I bought around 2002, which had a 256 MB CF memory card). I purchased a little ‘point-and-shoot’ compact camera — a Panasonic Lumix DMC-XS1 — for just under AU$150 (the 32 GB Micro SDHC card was extra).
And today I went into the garden to test out some of the features such as the 5x optical zoom, the panorama feature (no public pics from that as yet as I was photographing my house and I don’t make those pictures public). I haven’t tried features like burst (lots of photos in rapid succession, which would be ideal for sports or moving animals etc.), or effects such as focusing on a colour and making all the rest of the background black and white.
I was really pleased with how these first photos came out — this little camera (it only weighs 100 g!) packs a punch. I haven’t retouched ANY of the photos below — they are as they came off the camera and as I saved them onto my computer. The only thing I did with some of them was crop out some of the background to centre the object better, and/or make a duplicate in my photo editing software, then crop out even more to better show things like the raindrops. I also didn’t resize them any of them or adjust the angle or apply any effects. As it rained overnight, quite a lot of the photos caught the raindrops perfectly on the flowers.
Click on a photo to view it larger.
King? Protea — one has a cropped version to show the raindrops and inside; the other is cropped to show the raindrops on the outside of the flower.
Strelitzia (aka Bird of Paradise) — I have several of these plants in the garden. Most are orange, but there’s at least one that’s yellow, and a HUGE one that’s white (not in flower yet).
Unknown protea — this is just a bud and no more than about 2 inches (5 cm) across, ready to flower. I just love the Fibonacci sequence in this bud! The bottom one is a bit blurry, but it shows the Fibonacci sequence better than the others, and also the size of the flower in relation to dead leaves on the ground.
Pink Diosma — this plant has TINY little pink flowers and I didn’t think I’d be able to get a decent photograph of them. The bees were buzzing around, but were hard to capture. That said, each of the photos of the diosma have at least one bee!
Update 28 July 2014: Some pics of a freshly cut lemon. Standard auto settings on camera, no post-processing except cropping the image.
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 
Beautiful photos Rhonda = you must be really happy with them…. so clear.
You’ve got it; the dew drops are exquisite! Hope you have a wonderful trip. Also, THANK YOU again for all your time and helpful advice to the users of the wonderful HQSS! I would not be doing near as well without your input and advice, especially regarding Magna Glide bobbins and tension issues! You are my Go-To Guru!!!!
Those are amazing pictures! Isn’t it interesting how camera technology keeps evolving! I have a Canon that I love but I would I think a smaller profile camera would work so much better for traveling. Does the camera connect to the internet to avoid the download step? (Not that I am that tech savvy but I can hope someday..).
Hi Kathy
No, it doesn’t connect to the internet directly. You’d need a WiFi camera for that (at much greater cost) or a WiFi-enabled Micro SD card like those from http://www.eyefi.com. However, according to the camera store guy, even with a WiFi-enabled camera or card it still doesn’t connect direct to the internet — it connects to your phone or tablet that then connects to the internet (I think I got that right!).
–Rhonda
What beautiful flowers and photos.
[…] clear blue skies, green everywhere, mild temperatures, no wind. A perfect day for a walk. So I took my new camera and set of on the ~3 km walk ‘around the block’. Normally this walk takes me about 40 […]