Hello from England

alyrpal

New Member
I am from Oxfordshire in England, approx 40 miles west of London. My old Olympus bridge camera was on the blink beyond economical repair so whilst I was on our tax free island Guernsey recently I popped into Guernsey Photographic to see what was on offer. We have a Canon EOS 300D and one 4x zoom lens but have increasingly found this to be a pain to lug around and keep swapping lenses on our holidays which are usually wildlife and landscape centric. Recently we drove ourselves around Namibia. A decent zoom lens was essential there as it was often difficult and dangerous to get near the animals. I also now go cycle touring often so a small and light camera is essential. Our aged eyes increasingly cannot do without a viewfinder in bright conditions.
Not knowing anything about current cameras I explained all this to the young lady who immediately flourished a Panasonic Lumix LF1. I was impressed, it had the viewfinder, 7.5 x zoom, and wide aperture lens for landscapes, 12 million pixels, a Leica lens and even automatic panoramas and decent resolution videos not to mention WiFi remote control and download onto a phone or tablet!
I insisted at looking at other similar cameras, but given my specification there wasnt much choice. The alternatives were bulkier, heavier, had expensive add on viewfinders, were eyewateringly expensive, or had pathetic zooms. So I bought theLF1 and after two days using it my wife bought one too.
Today I bought a Digital Photographer magazine and there was a review of the LF1 versus an Olympus, Sony and a Samsung (none of which have viewfinders, and which were all considerably more expensive). The LF1 won the comparison although it couldnt quite match the Olympus and Sony for picture quality. For my modest purposes I find the resolution, colours and host of inbuilt automatic features mind boggling but very practical and useful. For us, the DSLR will mostly reside in the cupboard from now on. I am amazed at how far compact cameras have come since I last looked at them. This experience has made me wonder that if manufacturers keep adding features and qualities to compact cameras what the future will hold for low end DSLRs?
So, I am now a serious compact camera user!
Many reviewers are not that impressed with the Lumix LF1 but I would like to hear if anyone here has an LF1 and how they are finding it?

Alan

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Welcome aboard! Can't help you on the camera, I've no experience with it, but I congratulate you on finding one with a viewfinder!

Sent from my MB865 using SeriousCompacts mobile app
 
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