So, I finally got a new camera after having the same one for the longest time.

This was my old camera, a Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82. It was actually pretty good! For the most part it did what I wanted, and there were never any real problems with it.

(subtle foreshadowing)

It was bridged so I couldn’t take the lens off and change them, but the range on that lens was from 20mm to 1200mm so there were never any situations where i absolutely needed to change lens.

The built in microphone was fine, I never actually used it and there’s not a lot to expect from a built in mic. I always just recorded sound separately either with my PC microphone or just my phone.

Pictures were great, but half the time it’s the person taking the pictures that matters. Videos were… not great at all. In daylight, it was fine, no real issues. But anywhere else, the video just looked HORRIBLE.

One issue is how the sensor^(?) handled contrast between two colours, specifically black against a white.

This might just be a compression issue inside of the camera, but those weird lines on the actual seat and inside the mic’s pop filter is what I’m talking about.

Another massive problem I had started to get, is the zoom function just not fucking working???

Most often when recording video, since zooming is extremely slow when recording, something would just break and I would have to turn the camera off and on.

This started to get extremely annoying, especially at air shows where a plane would suddenly appear and I would need to zoom pretty quickly to get it. But half the time that error would pop up and there was nothing I could do about it.

But also the zooming was just incredibly slow anyway

This thing is the only way to controll the zoom of the lens, a single wheel which can only rotate a maximum of 45° in each direction.

There’s lag when you first start zooming too. It takes a second to recognise you’re actually trying to zoom, and it starts of extremely slow too, as if it has some automatic easing on it.

I get that it probably can’t be too fast to protect the lens and the motor inside, but after a while it was just unbearable.

But now, I have this new camera! A Canon EOS R50.

I only got this a couple days ago, so I haven’t been able to really try it out yet, but after a few test shots at home, I feel like I’m going to quite like this.

I got it with two lenses; an 18mm - 45mm, and a 55mm - 210mm.

I can’t say I’ll be taking pictures of planes with these any time zoon as most of the pictures I have were taken in the hundreds and sometimes thousands of mm’s, so perhaps I’ll have to save up for a lens like that.

It’s gonna be fun learning to get used to manually zooming now, but for a while thats what I’ve been wanting.

One thing I immediately like about this camera is that the screen on the back can flip out, and even rotate backwards, so if you’re ever recording yourself, you can see if you’re in frame or not.

Another thing is an actual microphone input! The FZ82 didn’t have this, so you’d have to rely on either the built-in microphone, or record audio separately and sync it up later. Probably gonna save up for one of those too, just a simple shotgun mic like from RØDE or something.

One more thing, it seems this camera might be easier to set up for a webcam! I never properly tried it with the FZ82, but from the looks of it, the R50 seems to be easier to set up and there’s actual software for it too. There’s both a mini HDMI out, but also a usb-c.

With usb-c, I believe you can just plug it into the PC and the software will pick it up, but with mini HDMI you’d need a capture card and all that. Which i actually have, but for my wii which I haven’t used in ages, so maybe I could try that.

As I said, I haven’t gone out and actually used this camera yet, so maybe there’s some features I haven’t seen yet or just haven’t had the chance to use. Hope it’s gonna be fun tho! Spent quite a bit on this camera so I hope I get to really use it.