MatBennett.com

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.

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It’s been one of those fantastic sea-side winter weekends down on Hayling. Cold but sunny with a good wind and some great waves - my absolute favourite for walking on the beach. With my girlfriend working all weekend I thought that this would be a good opportunity to try to get used to the new camera.

I do have a tendency to get absorbed in things, but I was stunned when, half way through my walk, I realised that I had already filled up my 1GB memory card was was getting low on battery. It really was a great day for photos on the beach.

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We’ve been getting some fantastic sunsets lately, which have given me a great chance to play with my new camera. Can’t say that I have exactly mastered it as yet, but nature has been doing most of the hard work for me.

It’s great just to be able to walk over to the beach with a camera when you see sites like these on your way home from work.

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Decided to make the most of the bright, cold day to blow out the cobwebs and take a walk up the Hayling Billy coastal trail today.

The trail follows the path of the old railway line running up the western side of Hayling Island. The trail starts at the old station in West Town and finishes at the bridge (or the other way around, depending on which direction you are heading), a distance of just over 3 miles each way.

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High tides and strong winds combined today to cause flooding all over the eastern end of Hayling.

Having got a call to say that there “was a river running down our road” I popped home with the camera to see what all the fuss was about and found out that our road had actually become a river.

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Despite the biting cold rain I just had to head down to the beach today and get a few photos of this amazing rainbow. Not sure that the pictures really do it justice, but vividly bright arcs were clearly visible over the eastern end of the island.

Had a really fun little solo-kayaking adventure today. I wanted to join my sister and the boys who were having a day on the beach at the other end of the island, so I decided to paddle down to see them rather than walking or taking the car.

The yellow line on the aerial picture shows my approximate route (although in truth the line should probably be a lot more wiggly!). OK, this isn’t the greatest expedition ever, but I was pretty please with myself. It’s about 2.5 miles in total, which I did in 35 minutes. More to the point, it is also the longest straight line trip that I have done yet.

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Thanks, in part, to Squeak’s inability to sober up enough to drive a car the bank holiday weekend on the beach extended into Monday - giving us more time to enjoy the kayaks (and Squeak more time to perfect his bailing technique)

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We finally managed to get the kayaks in the water again today after too many weeks of them being allowed to dry out. Only put them in over the road from home, but got a few hours out there is some reasonable waves.

Rick, Squeak and Carrie (who managed to avoid the camera!) came down with us - albeit a few hours later than planned. Mum and Jacob also joined us after a while.

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I have to confess to having a bit of a fascination with the old oyster beds at North Hayling. Despite being just off the main road very few people make use of this surprisingly peaceful spot. In fact, a lot of locals don’t even seem to know it is there.

The calm of the shallow sea-water “ponds” can be almost ethereal at times, despite some retard in the local council sticking an ugly bus-shelter up at the protected site (there is no road - let alone busses). I wanted to capture some of this tranquility on camera, which is what I have tried to so with these pictures. As is usual with my photos, there has been no post-processing or photoshopping with these - all are exactly as they came off the camera.

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