Trialing the Panasonic around Melbourne

Day 2 in the city with my new point and shoot – the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18, and I thought I should try a few shots over lunch and on the night walk back to my car. Check out all of the shots here.
Sitting on a bench in the middle of the CBD, I was staring into my LCD screen trying to interpret the icons. Suddenly feet started appearing in the preview. I decided to see how fast the autofocus worked on a dull day with no pre-focus and got this.

 

 

 

Looking back up from the foot, I noticed a street artist using his hands to create some pretty authentic renaissance style painting on the concrete. You could spend all day in Melbourne photographing the various street performers, and when you get bored with them you just photograph some of the more unusual people hanging around.

I was curious about how the camera handled night lights and handheld slow shutter speeds. For the most part it does a great job, although at times I had to place it on a steady surface and take long exposures. This shot was handheld and typifies some of the night shots I might be capturing in many of the world’s busiest Asian cities.

After much dawdling around the CBD I started to get cold and began to make my way back to Crown Casino, where I had parked for the day. The rest of these images were taken on longer exposures, but show what you can do with a cheap camera when you are traveling. These are all different views of the Yarra River around the Southbank and Crown Casino areas.

Every hour the Crown Casino flame jets explode into life, lighting up the boardwalk with spurts of a hot, orange glow. Far more difficult to photograph with this type of camera, and I really wasn’t in the right place to shoot them effectively, but hey – I had fun trying. Perhaps the tourists in the foreground of this image had more luck than I did.

Well, next stop Singapore. See you there…