Five Frames With A Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28, First Impression

Re-Living The CCD Sensor - Five frames with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28, a very impressive first outing with a 10MP CCD sensor digital bridge camera.

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I upgraded my digital bridge camera recently, from the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 which I have been using for a couple of period sessions, to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28. The update saw me having a slightly bigger 1/2.33" CCD sensor (1/2.5" on the FZ18) and a higher image resolution at 10MP (8.3MP on the FZ18). Like the FZ18, the FZ28 comes with a 1:2.8~4.4 18x optical zoom Leica DC Vario-Elmarit lens with a zoom range from 27-486mm (35mm equivalent). For image processing, the FZ28 features the high-speed, high-performance, Venus Engine IV.

Panasonic Kumix DMC-FZ28

Besides the numerous specs that you look up from digital camera review sites, the FZ28 is now capable of doing video clips in HD (not really my forte), comes with a 230,000 dots 2.7-inch display, and a Record/Play toggle, right where your thumb would rest when shooting. The new Venus engine does seem to be slightly better than the Venus III of the FZ18. While touching up the images on the computer is recommended, I tweaked mine mainly with Auto Tone Correction, Brightness & Contrast, and a bit of Unsharp Mask.

Enjoying photography is not without the pitfall of just having a camera that you are not too happy with, the inquisitive need for model upgrades or replacements, and the cost of doing it all. With film photography, it could very well be the spiraling cost of film and its development charges, while on the other hand, the high cost of acquiring current digital models with very advanced features could be just as telling. Looking between the rift, you may find the ubiquitous digicam with CCD sensors as just the ticket for you, with captures that have lower noise, higher sensitivity, and better image homogeneity.

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Five Frames With A Spiratone Minitel-M 500mm F8 Mirror, First Impression

Digital Moments - Vintage lens test a T-mount Spiratone Minitel 500mm F8 Mirror, first impression.

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Hi all, I am back to doing a 'Vintage Lesn Test' this week, after going for a sustained 'Re-Livimg The CCD Sensor' series for the past few weeks. This week's lens is the T-mount Spiratone Minitel-M 500mm F8 Mirror, a product launched in the 80s, which nobody seems to remember much about it, nor saying much about it even on PentaxForums. The lens costs me USD $30 on the big bay.

Olympus E-P5, Spiratone Minitel-M 500mm F8 Mirror

Mirror lenses came with the cons of being only a single fixed aperture lens, a very slow one at it, and with quality that is something to be desired as well, including not being as their conventional telephoto counterparts (no, we are not thinking about Hubble here). It does have the merits, though, of being very compact and lightweight.

On the 2x crop sensor Olympus E-P5, with an equally easy-to-acquire T-mount adapter, the Spiratone Minitel 500mm F8 Mirror is a long throw super-telephoto with a 1000mm equivalent (35mm Full-frame) focal length, and with tweaks to the exposure settings that you can do on the camera itself, including increasing Contrast, Saturation, and Sharpness, and a little bit of Unshark Masking on the table-top, images could be just as equally impressive as I have done to mine as posted.

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Five Frames With A Zonlai Discover 25mm 1:1.8, First Impression

Digital Moments - Five frames with a Discover 25mm 1:1.8, a low-cost manual focus prime you might end up enjoying using.

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The lens was listed on the auction as a Zonzei, and came in a Zonlai sponge lied box, but the lens itself says Discover on its trim ring. I know it is the same make, and you can find the lens listed as Zenzei, Discover, Kenro, Hengyijia, and maybe others as well. The lens is a low-cost manual focus prime manufactured for mirrorless cameras out of the mainland. Visually, it’s a beautiful lens, looks reminiscent of a film camera lens, feels solid and well-built, and comes with a hood.

Olympus E-P5, Zonlai Discover 25mm 1:1.8

The lens is fully manual, with a medium throw and a well-damped focusing scale. The aperture ring is clickless and equally well-damped, which I liked very much. The lens mount is equally well built and fits well, making it a standard normal 50mm equivalent on the E=P5. Not too much problem with focusing either as the E-P5 comes with a focus peaking feature which I use all the time with manual focus lenses.

For these first impression images, the shots were taken wide open, fairly close to the minimum focusing distance of 0.18 meters, on a quick session in the garden. The images were pretty sharp but the colors are rather subdued, which made me resort to Haze & Saturation enhancement or deduction on the tabletop image editor. The lens, though, is good enough to toy with bokeh shots or street photography walkabouts.

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Five Frames With A SMC Pentax-A 50mm 1:2, The Penultimate Choice

Re-Living the CCD Sensor - Image making with a vintage SMC Pentax-A 50mm 1:2 with a 10MP CCD sensor Pentax K-m digital SLR.

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My effort with the 'Re-living the CCS Sensor' series saw me going through a range of vintage digital cameras, cameras that were in production more than 10 years ago, fitted with CCD sensors, which was then the old standard for camera sensors from the early 80s till the late 2000s. For a kit setup, the Pentax K-m (K2000 in the US), and the SMC Pentax-A 50mm 1:2 manual focus prime is my penultimate selection.

Pentax K-m, SMC Pentax A 50mm 1:2

CCD sensors are known to produce high-quality images with low noise, better color accuracy and uniformity, higher sensitivity, and with a look and feel that are different from CMOS sensors, with some saying that the images are very much film-like. Though more expensive to manufacture CCD sensors still have many uses, including machine vision, astronomy, food science, as well as life sciences, and medical applications.

The real advantage to photo enthusiasts is having the option to choose from a range of forms and functional capabilities, from ultra-compact travel zooms to superzoom digital bridge cameras, and to the ubiquitous digital SLR cameras. Prices vary, but you may find them costing lower than comparative film cameras, where you will have the added saving on film, film development, time cost, or the cost of acquiring an advanced digital camera that may prove a mite too hard to handle as well.

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