Change Of Camera...

About a year ago I bought a new camera. A Fuji Finepix S8000fd. Having previously had a Fuji Finepix s602z. which we TOTALLY loved, we thought this would be a great upgrade. It was not. It was a huge downgrade if anything. Nearly instantly I was very unhappy with the noise on dark colours etc. It ended up on the shelf quickly. A few months later I felt maybe I'd been too hard on it, got it out, tried to used it with an open mind... But soon got very sad about the results again.

Over the last year this cycle has repeated a few times. Always with the end result that I felt very sad to see the pictures I took. :(

Having just returned from spending Christmas (and going to my sister's wedding before that) in Sweden with my family, I got the chance to play with my dad's old Panasonic Lumix camera. I saw the difference straight away. So much less noise compared to the Fuji camera. It was very obvious. To be totally sure that it wasn't just me seeing what I wanted to see, I did a blind test with mum & dad. I took 11 identical photos with our Fuji and dad's Panasonic and re-named them...

And even though they had no idea which photos were taken with which camera, they pointed out exactly the same problems that I'd noticed and came to the conclusion that the Panasonic was way better.

So I have been doing some research on the Panasonic Lumix range and found this:

I ordered it the other day and I'm really excited to see how it will turn out. It's got a delivery time of 1-3 weeks so I'm not totally sure when it will arrive but I can wait.

I did consider an DSLR (which would meet all my "demands"...which no other camera really does) but I really wanted to avoid the bulk & weight. I find that the bigger & heavier your camera is, the less you take it with you "just in case" and the more "big days" (days out, holidays etc) it has to be for you to take it a long. I really love my tiny Canon handbag camera and I'm hoping that this new Panasonic will be the compromise I need to go with it, lightweight enough not to be put off taking it along yet more functions for times when it's needed :)