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Lumix DMC G3 – camerawize

 

The Lumix DMC G3 is a Flyweight Champion

Smaller, Faster, Tougher – the G3 is a Great CSC

Panasonic were the first manufacturer to bring out Compact System Cameras (CSC) and to revolutionize how we think about D-SLRs. However, they haven’t rested on their laurels. Each new generation aims at a different niche and satisfies different wants. The Lumix DMC G3 is aimed at enthusiast still photographers who want a light, versatile compact size camera, but who won’t  compromise on quality and want an old style viewfinder.

The Lumix DMC G3 is the smallest, lightest CSC camera with a viewfinder available at the moment and, whilst it doesn’t have all the functionality of its siblings the GX1 or GH2, it does have some extra-ordinary features.

The 16 Mega-pixel file size offers superb quality pictures and the Auto-focus is super-fast with a particularly good contrast AF for greater accuracy.

The electronic viewfinder offers 100%  field of view and magnification. For those more comfortable using a back-screen, the Lumix DMC G3 has a touch sensitive, fully hinged and tiltable LCD screen, which is very useful for high or low shots. Shutter speed can extend to 1/4000 sec and ISO can go to 6400. With Burst speed varying between 4FPS for full size files or 20FPS for 4 MP files, this is a very versatile piece of kit. The sleek body keeps dials to a minimum, but all the important options are easily accessible.

In terms of image quality, the Lumix DMC G3 is easily as good as most of the up-market D-SRs, keeping fine details and having surprisingly little noise, even towards its top ISO settings. The G3 is also a great video camera, shooting full HD. the autofocus is able to track during video shooting and the lens mechanism is silent. Although it doesn’t have an external Mic socket, it records stereo sound very well.

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Lumix TZ20

 

With the Lumix TZ20, Pansonic have taken their excellent technology and produced a camera that makes sharing your images so much easier with GPS geo-tagging. It is amongst the best in category with its 14 Mega-pixel files and remarkable Leica 16x zoom lens. This is equivalent to 24-380mm and the image zoom within the camera can take magnification to 21x (500mm). The 24mm setting is superb – especially good for ultra-wide angle shots. The lens is covered with a unique anti-glare coating. The autofocus is quick and accurate and the image stabilization means that the pictures are usually sharp, even at full zoom and when hand held.

14 MP files are easily big enough to blow up to poster size and it can shoot a very impressive 10 frames per second in a single burst. ISO extends to 6400, though this is not a camera designed especially for low light photography.

The Lumix TZ20 has a GPS unit with a cache of landmarks already loaded,so you can let the camera geo-tag your shots ready for sharing on social media sites. they camera will automatically store the tagged pictures in alphabetical order for speedy retrieval.

The LCD touch screen is clear and bright. you can use autofocus by just tapping on the subject on screen and you can tap to take the picture as well. The 10 FPS burst can be used to produce 3D images – just press the button and the camera will choose the two best images for the 3D effect.

The TZ20 can record full HD video. The autofocus and and image stabilization works with video and makes a huge difference to the quality, particularly if you are shooting on the move. There is an inbuilt stereo Mic. Many of the scene modes for stills transfer over to video. These include Portrait, Soft Skin, Transform, Self-Portrait, Scenery, Food, Party, Candle Light, Sunset, Beach, Snow, Aerial, Pinhole and Film Grain. It has a HDMI socket so that you can play your video straight onto a TV. It takes SD memory card and SDHC memory cards and has a built in memory of about 18MB.

OUR EXPERT SAYS

What a great travel camera! The TZ20 combines a superb lens, fast burst speed and excellent image quality to produce a great all-rounder. The geo-tagging facility is really clever and the image stabilizer turns a good stills camera into an astonishing video camera. The HDMI socket means you can see your work on your TV as soon as you get home.

Panasonic Lumix TZ20 Features

16x Optical Zoom Lens (21x including digital): Excellent quality lens and the built in image stabilizer is superb.

Full HD video: Good quality and it can plug straight into your TV.

Built-in GPS Function, Geo-tagging and landmark recognition: Means your images are Social Media ready.

Touch-screen LCD : Intuitive and quick. 

3D Photo Shooting Capability: Easy with the 10FPS burst mode.

Find out more about the Lumix TZ20 here.

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Nikon Coolpix L26 – camerawize

The Nikon Coolpix L26 is an excellent camera for beginners. It is a described as a no frills camera- and is one of the cheapest around, but has a surprising array of features and still retains the quality you would expect from Nikon. The 5x lens is the usual high Nikon standard and it produces a 16 mega-pixel file. It has an easy to use auto mode  (with 18 simple options) and has a larger than average LCD screen. Portraits are easy with the Smart Portrait System, which has blink warning and skin toning.

It slips into video recording at the touch of a button and can shoot remarkably crisp 720p video. 

The L26 takes AA batteries and is available in silver, red and black.

The Coolpix L26 is ideal for someone who just wants a basic point and shoot, a youngster showing an interest in photography, or to take to places you wouldn’t want to take an expensive camera. Although it seems basic, it is capable of taking some great shots.

Nikon Coolpix L26 Features

16 MP File Size:This is really impressive. You can blow pics up to poster size

Easy Auto mode: This optimizes all the settings to ensure good photos

 5x optical zoom lens (26–130mm): Not the biggest range, but a great quality lens

720p video recording: One touch recording and really good quality video

e-VR (vibration reduction): Similar to the system on other nikon compacts

7.5 cm (3.0-in.) LCD screen: Larger than other cameras in this bracket

 ISO up to 1600 and Motion detection: All these contribute to your picture quality

Best shot selector: Selects your sharpest shot for you

18 scene modes: All the popular styles catered for here 

Wireless transfer: Transmit your pictures directly to your phone or computer 

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Nikon D3400 buttons – camerawize

The Nikon D3400 Buttons

Nikon D3400 DSLR Camera

The Nikon D3400 buttons allow you to get into the inner workings of the camera easily. Whilst the Mode Dial is a useful short cut to se the camera to shoot in specific styles, the buttons will give you more control over your pictures and videos.

The Nikon D3400 buttons at the top begin with the ON/OFF switch. You can see that that rotates either clockwise or anti-clockwise. Within that switch is the shutter button and this is what you press to take the picture. The next large thing on the top of the camera is the MODE DIAL. This is really important because it is the thing that you are going to turn to most of all – particularly in the early stages of your photography with this camera but pretty much all the way through. The MODE DIAL will tell the Nikon D3400 what mode you want to use to take the picture, and the mode in this sense means what style of picture or the circumstances in which you are photographing so that the camera itself can change the settings and the parameters to take the picture with the best exposure. Unless you are in M for manual, in all the other modes the camera will decide the best exposure for you and that’s very important to remember.

 

Next to the delete button is the SHUTTER CONTROL BUTTON. Now it is not the shutter release button, which is on the top and allows you to take the picture, but the shutter control button gives you the options for when you press that shutter button. So, for example, the first option is single frame which means that you press the shutter button once and you take one picture. The next one is continuous which means that if you press the shutter button then you will take five frames per second probably up to four or five seconds before it has to start to buffer which means of course up to 20 or 25 frames. The one after that is the quiet shutter release. Then, after that, you get on to the self timers. The self timer can be very useful because if you want to take a picture of a group and be in that group, then you can set it on to the initial one which is ten seconds and then you can press the shutter button and then run round to the front and be in that picture, which is very useful. The next two are with connection to the remote control the infrared remote control which you can buy as an accessory to this camera and it allows you to set the shutter and to release the shutter by remote control using infrared. It has a two-second delay and it has an instant shutter release. The two-second delay makes sense of course because you do not want to be photographed if you are going to be in the group holding the shutter release infrared light. So it gives you two seconds to put your hand down. The instant one is if you are away from the camera but you have infrared connection to it and it means that you can fire that shutter release straight away.

The buttons on the left hand side of the camera are really very useful and quite powerful. The one at the very top is the PLAYBACK BUTTON and that allows you to see the pictures or the videos that you have taken. So by pressing that button and then using the multi-selector to navigate your way through, you can see either the stills or the videos that you have taken and by looking at the magnifying glasses which are just below the MENU BUTTON either the plus or the minus, if you find a still image that you want to examine more closely then you can use the plus to go into that and look at it more closely or to come out of it again you can use the minus magnifying glass. With the minus magnifying glass you can look at multi images on the back as well so if you press that when it is a full frame then you will get four images and then you will get nine and then you will get even more if you press it on more time, and that gives you an idea of how many pictures you have taken and if you wish, I guess the sort of progress that you are making in terms of the images that you are taking if you’re doing a specific shoot, or you are trying to take a picture of something in particular. The one we missed out there is the MENU BUTTON and that really is important because that allows you access to the menus. Now the one criticism that I would aim at Nikon here is that they have not given us enough menus. we have essentially got four. We have got a PLAYBACK MENU, a SHOOTING MENU, a SETUP MENU and a RETOUCH MENU and then the one below that is just a RECENT SETTINGS MENU. So we have essentially four menus with an enormous number of selections in each of them. That means that it can be quite difficult to find what you are looking for and I would either say this is a criticism I have of this camera. There are other cameras out there which have more menus with fewer subcategories and navigating through them is a lot more simple, but this is what we have got and we shall go through the menus in a different video.

If we go down again to the magnifying glass we also have next to it a question mark and that is also very useful because if we get to a point where we are looking at one of the options in the camera and the question mark pops up at the bottom of the screen, then by pressing this button we get a brief guide as to what it is we have selected. The final button here is the i button and it is very useful because it gives you quick access to the settings that you can change when you want to take a picture. Please remember that if you are in one of the manual modes M, A, S, P, then you have access to – and are able to change – more settings than if you are in an automatic mode, because the automatic mode makes many of those selections for you and you do not have the ability to change them.

On the left hand side you have got two sockets, one for USB and one for an HDMI lead. The USB allows you to connect your camera to a computer and transfer your pictures across and the HDMI lead socket here allows you to connect your camera to a TV in order for you to see your pictures or your videos on a television. You do not get either of these leads in the box so you would have to buy them, but they are useful ways of connecting to other devices and particularly with the USB lead if you want to transfer your pictures onto a computer without having to take your card out and have a card reader. On the other side you have the card socket and this is where your SD card goes. it is a full size SD. On the bottom is the door for the battery compartment to allow you to place the battery. The only other thing on the bottom is the socket which allows you to attach the camera to a tripod. It is a standard fit – if you buy a tripod for a DSLR it will fit this camera so there is no need to worry about that.

Now let us take a look at the front Nikon D3400 buttons. The first thing we see is the infrared receiver and when I mentioned using the infrared shutter button the ML-L3 then that is the receiver for that infrared signal. You do not notice it usually. The second thing to look at here is the redeye reduction lamp and that is very useful when you have the flash operating because sometimes when you photograph people the light bounces directly out of their eyes and creates a red-eye effect. This light will flash an instant before the flash goes off and will cause the pupils to contract and therefore reduce the possibility of redeye. It is also the self timer indicator so if you have got the camera set to self timer then this will flash to indicate that it is on properly, and finally it can also operate as the auto focus assist illuminator which means that if the camera is trying to focus on something in very poor light or focus on something that’s got very little contrast then the light will go off to help it focus better. Then, going around to the other side of the camera then the first thing to look at here is the lens release button and obviously you need to press that button in order to release the lens. Above that and above the badge for the D3400 those three little indents there, they are the internal microphone. It operates reasonably well over a short distance, but just remember if you are videoing not to put your fingers over that.

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Then we get onto to quite interesting buttons they are the FUNCTION BUTTON and the FLASH BUTTON. The function button allows you to select specific functions which you can change by pressing that button so you can change image quality and size, ISO, white balance or active d-lighting. Personally I would change that to ISO and the reason I would do that is because it is very useful when you are shooting video. The button above that is the flash mode button and if you press it then it will pop up the flash and allow you to use the flash even if the setting or the mode you are on doesn’t think you need it and that can be useful when you want to use fill-in flash at a time or a point where the Nikon D3400 does not actually think you require it. But that is not all, because if you’ve popped up the flash then if you press this button again then it will give you options for the flash mode. Now there is a video on flash and flash guns so I am not going to go into much detail here but the flash modes on offer here are fill-in flash, red eye reduction, slow sync with red eye, slow sync rear curtain and slow sync and then back to fill-in flash. That is a really useful way of changing the purpose of the flash very quickly. But again that is not all because if you press the flash button and the exposure button which we have mentioned already then you get to change the flash compensation by using the main dial again at the back. You can increase the flash compensation by one stop or you can reduce it down by three stops and that is very useful if you have taken a picture with the flash and you think it is either a little too bright or a little too dark. So by using those two buttons in combination you can actually change the flash compensation very easily and very quickly.

For more about the Nikon D3400, click here

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Best Nikon D3400 settings

Nikon D3400 settings are pretty straightforward. The first thing you need to do is to charge your battery. When you buy the camera you will receive a battery and a battery charger and, although the battery may look like it is fully charged, it is worth just giving it an extra hour or so in the charger to make sure. Once you have charged it, put it into the camera Then attach the lens. The lens and camera both have a white dot. Match the dots and gently fit it into the bayonet socket and then twist the lens anti-clockwise until it clicks.

The next thing you need for your Nikon D3400 is a good memory card. Of course you need a memory card to store the pictures and the videos that you shoot on the camera. We suggest getting a SanDisk card and the reason for that is that SanDisk will guarantee the life of the card. It is important to remember they won’t guarantee what is on the card, but if the card fails SanDisk will replace the card. So the way you put the card into the camera is in the side socket. You open it up by pulling it slightly forward and you put the card in facing to you and just push it in until it clicks. What you will notice is that when you put it in completely, a green light flashes on the back of the camera to say that it is being done properly. On the other side are two other ports these are very useful because they are a USB port, which allows you to transfer your pictures directly from the camera to the laptop, and beneath that an HDMI port which allows you to show your pictures on a TV. Neither of these leads are available in the box so if you want to do either of those things you need to buy the leads separately.

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Once you have inserted your memory card, the next thing to do is to switch your Nikon D3400 on. But first what I would suggest you do is you take off the lens cap and activate the lens. Press the button on the side of the lens and extend it out. Once you have done that you can switch on the camera and then you will see, in the back screen, that you have got various choices to make in your D3400 settings. You choose your language – you do that by moving the Cross Keys left to right and up and down and then selecting the language by pressing OK. You choose your date in a similar fashion and you also then choose your time zone in exactly the same way, using the cross keys on the back.

All of these things can be changed later anyway so do not worry too much if you get them wrong, or in fact if you do not want to worry too much about them now and bypass those options and to return to them afterwards. But the next thing to do in your D3400 settings is to format your card. If it is a new card, or an old card for that matter, you need to ensure that it is formatted correctly for this camera. Press the Menu button and then go to the Setup Menu. That is the spanner icon. The second one down in that section is FORMAT MEMORY CARD. There is always an element of danger when you format memory cards, particularly once you have started using the camera. If you format the memory card you delete everything on it – even pictures that you think you have protected will be deleted so you need to be very careful when you format cards. However, when you are doing it for the first time you are perfectly at liberty to go to yes and click OK, and it will format the memory card and attune it to this camera properly.

Now you are in a position to take a picture or shoot a video. You can either do this through the Liveview screen which enables you to see what is through the lens or you can do this through the more conventional DSLR way which is to look through the viewfinder. The viewfinder can be tuned to your eyesight, so if you look through the viewfinder and, although the camera says what you are looking at is sharp, it does not look sharp to you, you can use the Dioptric Adjuster which is on the side here to change the focal length of the viewfinder, which means that you can look through it and it looks sharp when in fact the camera says it looks sharp. That is very useful so take some moments just to focus and refocus on a few different things and just check that the viewfinder, when you are looking through it, looks sharp when the camera says that it is sharp.

One of the things that I change straight away in my Nikon D3400 settings is the Auto Timer because cameras have timers on them now in order to help save the battery life and that means that sometimes they switch themselves off and it can be really annoying. But you can set your own Auto Timer lengths by going into the camera and into the Menu Settings so if you go into menu and you go into the Setup Menu then, by going down onto the next page – there are quite a lot of settings here, you will see AUTO OFF TIMERS as an option. If you select that then you can either select Short, Normal or Long or you can go down to Custom and you can select those lengths of time that you prefer and that is what I do. I go down to Custom and check the ones that I want which are PLAYBACK and MENUS IMAGE REVIEW which is the length of time the images are on the back screen for you just to look at after you’ve taken it. LIVEVIEW which is the Liveview screen, and the STANDBY TIMER which is how long the camera sits on standby before it switches itself off.

You can shoot pictures with your Nikon D3400 now, but the best thing to do is to select your image quality and your compression quality before you do. So the first thing to do is to go back into menus and in this instance we are looking at the Shooting Menu. If you go to there in your D3400 settings, the first thing you come across is IMAGE QUALITY. Now image quality talks about compression rates not about the file size, but the compression rate is important. You can shoot RAW images with this camera but I would recommend, initially at least, shooting JPEG and the option I would choose would be JPEG fine because that is the best quality compression rate for JPEGs for this camera. Once you have done that you move one down to IMAGE SIZE and again there is no point shooting medium or small images with this camera. I would say the best thing to do is to shoot large images. Bear in mind that the memory card is probably big enough, with a 16 or 32 gigabyte memory, to shoot hundreds of pictures so you are not limited by memory space as we once were so there is no reason not to shoot large and not to shoot fine JPEG images. As we are in the Shooting Menu in D3400 settings, why don’t we go down one more from IMAGE SIZE to ISO SENSITIVITY SETTINGS. When you switch the camera on for the first time then the D3400 settings are set so that the Auto ISO Sensitivity Control is on and that the camera will choose the ISO setting and if you look below the Auto ISO Sensitivity Control, it will set the maximum sensitivity according to what is chosen there. When you switch it on for the first time the maximum is 25,600. I would say that when you are taking normal pictures you probably do not want to go above 1600 ISO – possibly 3200. By leaving it as it is you allow the camera to choose far higher ISOs than you otherwise might wish, so if you go into this setting, I would suggest that you make the maximum setting as I say 6400 and I would also switch the ISO Sensitivity Control off because that then means that you have more control over the ISO in the basic D3400 settings and also in the manual settings.

After setting the ISO I would stay in the Shooting Menu  in the D3400 settings and move one down again to WHITE BALANCE. Now it is important initially that white balance is on AUTO. What white balance does is it sets the white in the picture or video. Now, if you know anything about colors, you know that white is a combination of all colors and so once the camera can set white it can also set the values for all the other colors. So it is very important and it is also very important if you are shooting somewhere where the balance of light is not normal – for example if you are shooting in an office where the light may be slightly blue or if you are shooting at home under artificial light where the color of the light might be slightly yellow. You are not going to see this with your naked eye because your brain manages to filter those tones and those colors out, but the camera will see it and it is important that the camera initially is on AUTO so that it can set the white balance itself and try to balance all of the different color components that it sees through the lens.

The last thing I want to mention is very useful once you have taken your pictures. If you go into Playback Menu once you have taken a picture and go down to PLAYBACK DISPLAY OPTION then you will see that you have options that give you information on the picture once you’ve taken it. So you have got the options in your D3400 settings of showing the HIGHLIGHTS the RGB HISTOGRAM SHOOTING DATA and OVERVIEW. These are really useful bits of information and they are useful for you to recall and go back to once you have taken the picture and you just want to see what settings you had, or actually during the live shoot when you can see with the RGB histogram or the tonal histogram where your picture may be failing or just not working to its optimum. So they are very useful things to have, and by allocating and switching those on when you go into playback mode and you look at your pictures by pressing the cross keys up or down you will be given these pieces of information with the picture also viewable on the view screen. It is a really useful way of just keeping control and keep an eye on the various options and settings that you have when you take a picture. So, for example, it will give you the histograms but also the ISO. It will give you the focal length, it will give you all the various autos in terms of white balance or whether the flash was on etc. In the old days when you were shooting with film you would have taken a notebook and written all of this down but because it is available on the back screen it makes it a whole lot easier. As you can see, getting your D3400 settings right is not difficult and means that you will get the best out of your Nikon D3400 straightaway.

Click on this link to find out more about the Nikon D3400 settings

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