Last year I decided I wanted a camera that would give me more control than a point and shoot but without the weight and bulk of a DSLR and lens.  The best compromise I could come up with was the Panasonic FZ-200.  I wasn’t disappointed.  This is an amazing camera.  It is built like a small, light DSLR but has a fixed lens.  The lens itself is a marvel – a Leica zoom with a constant 2.8 aperture between 24 and 600 mm (equivalent.)  It has an excellent EVF (electronic view finder,) which was a must for me.  It is a compromise.  I don’t care how good the camera is you’ll never get the same quality of photos on the kind of small sensors that make a camera like this (as well as point and shoots) possible.  But unless you’re a pro and plan to print very large this camera does it for me.  It isn’t water proof but I can shoot RAW as well as RAW + JPEG.
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On this year’s trip I plan to get into night sky photography so in addition to my camera I’ll be carrying a tripod and a wireless remote shutter release.  Should be fun.  The tripod that I’ve chosen, by the way, is also a marvel: Sirui T-025x, which weighs in at 1.8 lb and folds down to 11”!
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I picked up my Pelican 1200 case, by the way, for under $40 at Amazon.com.
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Jimmar, if you're looking at buying a Pelican case make sure you get the right size.  The 1200 will just fit my FZ-200 so anything bigger is going need a bigger case.  I called Pelican with the dimensions of my camera - I originally wanted to try squeezing into an 1150, one size down - and they really helped me out.

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This christmas I learned two things. First I took a number of my better pictures and decided to make 8x10 prints of them.  I also decided to put them on a thumb drive so I could display them on me TV.  In both cases, I needed to crop them (but differently for the two mediums).  The lesson I learned which is another difference from film, do not OVER-zoom.  Take pictures bigger than what you might otherwise and crop later.   And for my eye, the technology has advanced to the point where you have plenty of pixels to spare except for anyone planning on creating HUGE prints (even an ultra HD TV only uses 3840 × 2160 pixels).

The second thing I learned was the height/width pixels on my wife's new point and shoot are twice what my old "good" camera has.  So while I may have 10x zoom and she only has 5x, she can take a picture a 5x zoom and crop it to what I took at 10x zoom and her pic which have the same detail as mine.

I tried something like that a few years back for my little point and shoot.  A real pain in the ass.  If it gets wet you have water stains that affect the photo plus I found that the integrity of the lens was compromised.  What's the point of getting a camera with a good quality lens and then putting a piece of cheap plastic in front of it?  My $.02.

azalea wrote on Jan 26^th, 2015 at 5:50pm:


Important to remember the size of the chip that those megapixels are measured on is important. Thus a full frame 20mp captures much more detail and dynamic range than a 20mp point and shoot. Think of it like film size, the chip on a point and shoot is tiny compared to that in a DSLR.
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