Re: Peterson's Park and cameras

["Jim Bailey" <jim at bailey dot aros dot net>]

Brian,

 

In my opinion, the Panasonic DMC-FZ20 is the best overall "inexpensive" camera for handheld bird photography. It sells for a street price of around $500 and comes with 12X optical zoom with image stabilization, which you really need with that much zoom. You can also get teleconverters and adapters for the camera if you want more zoom. This is a 4 megapixel camera, so you can do some serious cropping of bird pictures.

 

If you want to see some bird photo examples taken with this camera and its predecessor, the FZ10, visit my website at http://bailey.aros.net/nature/Birds.htm. Most of these pictures were taken with an Olympus 1.7X teleconverter with adapter.

 

Jim Bailey

----- Original Message -----

From: Brian J. Mickelson

To: birdtalk@utahbirds.org

Sent: Friday, December 31, 2004 11:17 AM

Subject: [BirdTalk] Peterson's Park and cameras

I took a short trip to my church stake's campground, Peterson's Park and saw a few Northern Flickers, Black-capped Chickadees, 2 Spotted Towhees, a Cedar Waxwing with a small group of sparrows, and a large number of Black-billed Magpies...

 

Now, I notice a lot of pics on the utahbird.org site.  I suppose most people have pretty nice cameras, but what are some lower-priced cameras people use that do a decent job for birders as well?  I have a young family and won't be looking at a $1500 camera for years, but we do want to purchase a digital camera for family things, but I want to use it on birding occasions, too.  Any suggestions?

 

Thanks,

Brian