Windsurfing Photos
mentioned in an earlier post that one of the things that attracted me to the Panasonic FZ30 that I chose as my new camera was the fact that it had a whopping great zoom built in as standard. What I didn’t mention before is that it has a neat little trick up it’s sleeve for when the 12x optical zoom just isn’t enough.
The FZ30 let’s you lower the final image size and use the extra resolution to boost the effective zoom of the camera - all without resorting to digital. For instance, in the gallery that follows, I dropped the image size to a respectable 5 mega pixels and got the effect of a 15.3x zoom. Very handy indeed.
The main reason that I wanted such a big zoom on the camera was that I wanted to try to get some pictures of all the great water sports that go on around Hayling Island where I lived. With the sea kicking up a treat today I thought it was about time I had a go at this and headed to the main windsurfing area of Hayling beach to see what was going on. This gallery is the result of that.
As this is the first time I have pointed the FZ30 at windsurfers, I predictably did pick up a few tricks through trial and error. Here are the lessons that I must remember for next time:
- Standing on the water’s edge and looking through a camera lens is an invitation to get hit by a big wave.
- Whichever windsurfer you have the camera trained on is invariably doing something less interesting that the one just out of shot
- Sea spray makes a wonderful mess on your camera lens. Get a clear filter.
- No matter how big your lens is, you will still want a bigger one.
