Hello my friends, 

Welcome back…How ya doing? I actually meant to post this a couple of weeks ago but life got in the way.

So, this is the fifth Fleeting Thought its been like a couple of months since the last one and I kinda feel I need a drum roll to start this post off…ready…I’ve finally taken the plunge and upgraded my camera!! Which is super exciting!!! Sadly my trusty L340 gave up on me, so this post is a little bit of my feelings and a tiny (sort of) review mixed with some random photography experiments.

Lets do this…

I haven’t felt the need to upgrade my camera before and have used my faithful Nikon Coolpix L340 since it was released – I’ve always liked how easy it is to use and the photo quality is pretty good (unless you try to zoom too far) but it never really let me down…I must’ve taken over 100,000 photographs with it!

In my garden there’s a huge sycamore tree – and the bird life here is amazing, I realised what a loser I am when I started making a list of all the birds I’d seen each year in my journal – which is something I now do every year and its nice to compare the differences in the bird life. There’s a Greater Spotted Woodpecker that attacks the bird feeders in the morning, tiny flittering Coal Tits (similar to a US Chickadee) for the first time in my life I’ve seen a Goldfinch and at night there are owls twoooing in the distance – which was actually quite spooky when I heard it the first time!!

Most excitingly I was able to watch a Red kite soaring around a bright blue sky all from the comfort of my hammock! There’s were things I’d never experienced living in a city.

Anyway. Even though the tree is literally fifteen metres from the house my L340 couldn’t clearly photograph any thing at that distance and in the end kept freezing before struggling to focus, I did briefly flirt with the mirrorless Canon R10 but decided I’m not a good enough photographer to warrant spending that much money on a camera atm…plus I couldn’t really get my head around what lenses I’d need, so in the end I finally (finally) landed on the Canon Powershot SX70 HS – its another ‘super zoom’ bridge camera, I know they’re not pro but I like bridge cameras and having everything built in, so that its not too heavy when I’m hiking.

I know they have smaller sensors but its actually the same size as my L340, and I never had too many issues with image quality. Its not weather sealed but I’m not likely to go out in the rain to photograph things and my L340 wasn’t weather sealed either but that never did it any harm. 

The SX70 is already a few years old but even if it only works a few years it meant I didn’t have to live without a camera! And it gives me a chance to learn about aperture and iso (which is something my L340 didn’t allow me to change) before I possibly make the leap to mirrorless.

There are sooo many buttons to play with and I know literally nothing! From my preliminary experiments ‘P’ is a good mode to begin with and I’m trying to keep my iso below 500, although I did mess about with full manual mode too. Quality wise the images are sharper than my L340 and it has this massive zoom reach of like 1365mm (35mm full frame equiv) its also quite light which means I can comfortably carry it around my neck all day during long treks on the moor.

Also the flippy-out screen is awesome! (this is the level I’m at!)

And it runs on a rechargeable battery, so I’m not eating my way through AA’s anymore.

I did try reading the digital user guide from Canon’s website but its like 250+ pages long! 

Photographing the dog is easier as the auto focus is so much quicker and captures my fluffy friend in all her loveliness.

Plants are also decent quality and I don’t need to get so close to the bugs to get a good shot – which is super helpful, every other butterfly photographer I’ve met has said pretty much ignore macro and go for telephoto instead as you’re less likely to scare it away! 

I’ve even had a good go at photographing the current residents of my butterfly house! And its does pretty well with Red soldier beetles and this amazing Scarlet tiger moth! Although I’ve not had a chance to try anything at a distance. In my opinion the photos I’ve taken so far are nice and clear, not too fuzzy and the colours are really bright.

Would I recommend the SX70? Absolutely – if you like bridge cameras, for me having everything in one place is super helpful, but if you’re more of a pro I imagine mirrorless/dslr is better for you.

Now I’ve just got to find things to photograph!!

So I reckon that just about wraps up this weeks post…I really hope you liked it! Whats your go-to equipment for photography? Next week I’m hoping to post something bug related if I can find any that want their piccy taken or even a new Butterfly tale. 

As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!