The Camera

Now a week after Scotland, I think I've thoroughly gone through every photo. Deleted the out of focus or just horrible ones, and have managed to get down from 2300 to about 1300. Still too many photos to consider scrapbooking, but I've learned I don't have to scrap them all.

This trip was a different kind of camera experience for me. I left, yes that's right, LEFT my huge Canon Rebel T3 at home. GULP!

I purchased this Lumix ZS100. During our trip to Ireland, one of the tour members had this camera. I asked him a ton of questions about it and after 14 days decided it was the camera for me. I love my Canon. It's just so heavy and so cumbersome to carry around for 14 days. I wanted something smaller.

But "smaller" often means a decrease in quality. I won't go for a lower quality. I don't want to spend a lot of time post processing photos. But getting a good, sharply contrast photo straight out of the camera is tough to get.

Enter the Lumix ZS100. This little camera produced the best photos. I found myself not touching them after shooting. A couple had to be cropped and people in the way had to be taken out, but otherwise, nada.

I was quite worried about taking such a significant trip without my tried and true camera. But at the last minute I decided that there would be 2 other cameras there and all would be fine. I had been testing the "little" camera and it would be fine.

So off I went and left Canon behind.

On the plane I remember momentarily freaking out asking myself, "What have I done?" You see pictures are me. They are what make me happy. They are my memories. They are how I express my creative side. I didn't want to risk all that ... and as usual, it all worked out.

I spent way more time fiddling with this camera, changing settings, then I ever did with the Canon. It's super simple to use and full of filters that help make photos more interesting, at least to me. I found my favorites and on occasion would swap things up just to see how they turned out.

These are my two favorite photos. And these are Straight Out of the Camera. NO touchup.

Both of these will be printed and put replace some of my wall photos.

At the end of the day I learned this, it's not always the camera...the photographer has something to do with it.

I wonder if the Canon will ever come out again.