Cat Box

[Steve40]

He seems to like to sleep here a lot, I don't know whether it is a Tv dls box, or a cat box. Taken with Panasonic TZ1 = 263mm eqv, ISO 80, from 7 feet, lighting = flash. :)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v116/steve40/263mmCat.jpg

[Patrick]

He seems to like to sleep here a lot, I don't know whether it is a Tv dls box, or a cat box. Taken with Panasonic TZ1 = 263mm eqv, ISO 80, from 7 feet, lighting = flash. :)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v116/steve40/263mmCat.jpg

Cats do like to choose their own beds don’t they? Our Henry discovered my lap top case and claimed it as his own, he fits on it pefectly. I had left it under my desk when I was using the lap top. That was 6 months ago I had to get another case.

Patrick

[Steve40]

Yes they do!. This one also has other some rather unique habits. My daughter just bought a new computer, and brought it by for me to check out. Well while I was doing that I laid the big poster they sent with it, showing all the proper places to make connections on the floor.

Along came Mr. Cat, this was something new, to which he felt obliged to add his signature. Anyway I told my daughter I did not repack it with the computer, and when she comes by to get it in a few days; it should be ok. :D

[Ian]

Cats do like to choose their own beds don’t they? Our Henry discovered my lap top case and claimed it as his own, he fits on it pefectly. I had left it under my desk when I was using the lap top. That was 6 months ago I had to get another case.

Patrick

I have very bad posture when sitting at my desk - I tend to sit at the end of the chair, leaving a perfect cat-sized space behind. Anyway, one of our two moggies comes to sit in this space everyday, without fail, at about 5PM - the evening feed is 6PM :)

Ian

[Ian]

I have very bad posture when sitting at my desk - I tend to sit at the end of the chair, leaving a perfect cat-sized space behind. Anyway, one of our two moggies comes to sit in this space everyday, without fail, at about 5PM - the evening feed is 6PM :)

Ian

Five minutes past five and guess who's just turned up? *LOL

Ian

[Patrick]

Five minutes past five and guess who's just turned up? *LOL

Ian

We had a moggy before Henry a real Heinz 57 called Mini; she was very adept at finding a little space behind me when I was sitting in a chair. Then very gently pushing so I moved forward a little, and carried on until I would find myself on the very edge of the chair, by which time she had settled comfortably. She was 22 years of age when she finally died; Henry is coming up to 16 now a good age for a pedigree.

Patrick

[Ian]

We had a moggy before Henry a real Heinz 57 called Mini; she was very adept at finding a little space behind me when I was sitting in a chair. Then very gently pushing so I moved forward a little, and carried on until I would find myself on the very edge of the chair, by which time she had settled comfortably. She was 22 years of age when she finally died; Henry is coming up to 16 now a good age for a pedigree.

Patrick

Our two will be 13 this spring and the vet was quite complimentary about their condition the other week. They have always been fed on dry food.

Ian

[Archangel]

He seems to like to sleep here a lot, I don't know whether it is a Tv dls box, or a cat box. Taken with Panasonic TZ1 = 263mm eqv, ISO 80, from 7 feet, lighting = flash. :)




Steve,

There is a TV commercial here in Greece, with a dog and a cat advertising a chain of electronic stores.
Well the cat looks just like yours! Very cute indeed.


Regards

George

[fluffy penguin]

We had a moggy before Henry a real Heinz 57 called Mini; she was very adept at finding a little space behind me when I was sitting in a chair. Then very gently pushing so I moved forward a little, and carried on until I would find myself on the very edge of the chair, by which time she had settled comfortably. She was 22 years of age when she finally died; Henry is coming up to 16 now a good age for a pedigree.

Patrick

I have two labradors that do that, and one of them thinks she is a cat, when she decides its time you gave her attention, she will climb on you onto the comp desk and sit infront of monitor:D

I love that photo of the cat, bet it was warm under there.

fluffy penguin

[Steve40]

Actually this little guy is the one, and only son of his mother, which we have had for seven years. Also he is equally - just as awkward. His mother is the most awkward cat I have ever seen. If she were walking through a field of hand-grenades I would want to be far, far, away.

Later that same night I took this photo, after going to bed I heard this heavy blump on the floor. The cat had fallen off the top of the chest-of-drawers, on his head.

He jumped up on the edge of the bead, shook it off a bit, and returned to the box again. Now I know what the term "Dumb Animal" means. :)

[Archangel]

Actually this little guy is the one, and only son of his mother, which we have had for seven years. Also he is equally - just as awkward. His mother is the most awkward cat I have ever seen. If she were walking through a field of hand-grenades I would want to be far, far, away.

Later that same night I took this photo, after going to bed I heard this heavy blump on the floor. The cat had fallen off the top of the chest-of-drawers, on his head.

He jumped up on the edge of the bead, shook it off a bit, and returned to the box again. Now I know what the term "Dumb Animal" means. :)

Steve,

The TZ3/TZ2 are nice and from the first samples I saw they take very nice shots. Also the FZ8 looks nice too.

George

[Steve40]

George.

I've been on the dpreview Panasonic forum discussing this - for the last four days. If the photos posted by Panasonic are all you have seen, you have seen the best. There are some more from both the TZ-2/3, and FZ8 posted elsewhere, and I don't have the url right now to refer you to - that tell a different story.

These are from an independent source, and are not studio posed, but are real world shots. The noise is horrid in all the examples, one TZ-2 shot even had noise evident in a mid gray area in broad daylight, @ ISO 100. Something I do not have to deal with on the TZ-1 until ISO 400, and not even that much then.

The ISO 3200, well you don't even want to go there, at more than thumbnail size, it is hardly recognizable as a photo at all.

They did several things to the new models that are not to kosher. For one they reduced the lens from F-2.8 to F-3.3 Further cutting light ability, and increasing shutter speeds, as you know longer exposures produce more noise.

They cut the focal length of the lens to 260mm. down from 350. Added 28mm wide instead of 35, but they still claim 10X zoom, which it is but still not equal to the TZ-1 350. The wide 28mm has a lot of barrel distortion, limiting its use as far as I am concerned.

They upped the Venus lll engine noise suppression, so now the noise I spoke of at ISO 100 is not just grainy, but splotchy. To this they added an auto-ISO function, which if not cut off by the user will cause the camera to select its own ISO, even if it is a noisy one. More useless effort to disguise noise, instead of dealing with the real issue.

The real issue is pixel stuffing. The new TZ's have 7, and 8 megapixel sensors respectively. The size increase in dimension up from 1/2.5 TZ-1 to 1/3.5 and 1/3.3 respectively. Not nearly enough to accommodate the additional 1, and 2 million increased pixel stuff job, but it did increase the noise.

The TZ-2 has no exposure bracketing, or burst modes, the TZ-1 had both. Its only available in the TZ-3 @ $349 - 399 also somewhat of a price increase. And offering you only one choice if you want these features, but the TZ-2 will not be available in the US, so that leaves no choice but to buy the TZ-3 anyway here.

Similar changes have been applied to the FZ8, and side by side comparison to the FZ7, show the same increased noise levels,

[Archangel]

George.

I've been on the dpreview Panasonic forum discussing this - for the last four days. If the photos posted by Panasonic are all you have seen, you have seen the best. There are some more from both the TZ-2/3, and FZ8 posted elsewhere, and I don't have the url right now to refer you to - that tell a different story.

These are from an independent source, and are not studio posed, but are real world shots. The noise is horrid in all the examples, one TZ-2 shot even had noise evident in a mid gray area in broad daylight, @ ISO 100. Something I do not have to deal with on the TZ-1 until ISO 400, and not even that much then.

The ISO 3200, well you don't even want to go there, at more than thumbnail size, it is hardly recognizable as a photo at all.

They did several things to the new models that are not to kosher. For one they reduced the lens from F-2.8 to F-3.3 Further cutting light ability, and increasing shutter speeds, as you know longer exposures produce more noise.

They cut the focal length of the lens to 260mm. down from 350. Added 28mm wide instead of 35, but they still claim 10X zoom, which it is but still not equal to the TZ-1 350. The wide 28mm has a lot of barrel distortion, limiting its use as far as I am concerned.

They upped the Venus lll engine noise suppression, so now the noise I spoke of at ISO 100 is not just grainy, but splotchy. To this they added an auto-ISO function, which if not cut off by the user will cause the camera to select its own ISO, even if it is a noisy one. More useless effort to disguise noise, instead of dealing with the real issue.

The real issue is pixel stuffing. The new TZ's have 7, and 8 megapixel sensors respectively. The size increase in dimension up from 1/2.5 TZ-1 to 1/3.5 and 1/3.3 respectively. Not nearly enough to accommodate the additional 1, and 2 million increased pixel stuff job, but it did increase the noise.

The TZ-2 has no exposure bracketing, or burst modes, the TZ-1 had both. Its only available in the TZ-3 @ $349 - 399 also somewhat of a price increase. And offering you only one choice if you want these features, but the TZ-2 will not be available in the US, so that leaves no choice but to buy the TZ-3 anyway here.

Similar changes have been applied to the FZ8, and side by side comparison to the FZ7, show the same increased noise levels,

Steve,

I only saw the photos from the official website of Panasonic.
Of course I need to see further shots to come into a complete and more fair conclusions.
Though given previous photos posted by Panasonic for their previous models and then seeing shots from review websites, the differences are not that huge. What I'm trying to say (and taking into account the same from other camera manufacturers that post sample images of their cameras and then seen also images of these cameras from web reviews) the photos don't really differ that much, at least for the dayshots.

But anyway, if you come across any of these links you mentioned before I would like to see them, since I'm interested mostly for the FZ8, if and only if there is some great advantage in image quality over the FZ5 (for videos and larger LCDs and higher ISOs, I really don't care much) and then for a new compact (the old one will go to my wife).
If the FZ8 doesn't say much in image quality, then I will check out the new Olympus 550-UZ and if it also not some big deal (always in terms of image quality) then I will have to start again the DSLR story that was burried for the last couple of years.

George

[Steve40]

Ok here are some non official Panasonic Page photos. Of course they say they are not necessarily as the photo from the production model will be, since this is a pre-production camera (but I wouldn't want to hold my breath on that). If your browser is set as mine to reduce images, be sure you open them up to full size. Pay particular attention to #15 #17 #19. This is the Venus lll engine at its best monster noise suppression preformance..


http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews_panasonic_lumix_dmc_fz8_photos.php

[Archangel]

Ok here are some non official Panasonic Page photos. Of course they say they are not necessarily as the photo from the production model will be, since this is a pre-production camera (but I wouldn't want to hold my breath on that). If your browser is set as mine to reduce images, be sure you open them up to full size. Pay particular attention to #15 #17 #19. This is the Venus lll engine at its best monster noise suppression preformance..


http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews_panasonic_lumix_dmc_fz8_photos.php

Ah...Photographybloq.
While the reviews there and the photos I've seen from the reviews are not really the best that they could be, generally you can get a basic idea of what the camera is capable of.
From what I see from the FZ8, it can take nice artistic paint photos! No need to apply special effects to make them look artistic in some editor. Hopefully the final model will be different, but how much different it can be?

I don't know what Panasonic tries to achieve by following this wrong politics. Instead of investing in the development of new sensors they try to tune the Venus Engines to cut as harsh as possible noise from the sensors.
Totally wrong way for me. Unless they try to achieve to be sold out to some other manufacturer. If that is their intention then they are heading the right way.

I'm so glad that I have the FZ5.
FZ5, FZ20, TZ1 and LS2 seems to be the models with the most decent image quality.
In other words the 5MP range.
The LEICA lens is one of the best (if not the best), but is not enough to make a camera good as a whole piece and Panasonic needs to understand that asap.


George

[Steve40]

Well if they don't come up and change the sensor by production time, there can't be any difference. I don't know what their goal is but whatever it is, they are certainly making, or not making, progress toward it.

If they don't do something very soon, like as in now, I don't expect to see the Panasonic brand continuing much longer. Someone on the dpreview forum said they should sell the line to Fuji, and let them make a real camera out of it. :D But in reality maybe they should contract to Fuji for some of their sensors. But! they would still have to revamp that monster Venus lll beast.

My sons FZ7 has the old Venus ll engine, and 6mp sensor, and does a better job than the new FZ8 that is supposed to replace it. I think from the photos I have seen in the past from the FZ5, it has both beat. :)