A while back I posted a question about buying a digital camera not for lofting, but for rocket photography from the ground. Then I got downsized and was out of work for about 3 months. I've been back at work for a couple months now, and am looking for ways to spend what's left of the severance package :-)
What I was looking at then, and still am is the class of cameras refered to a "super zoom" i.e on the order of 10:1 OPTICAL zoom. Last time around the cream of the crop seems to have been the Olympus C-740 over the deal I saw on the C-720.
But since then some new stuff has come out. I'm particularly interested in the two optically stabilized cameras, for shooting closeups of the away pads. One is the Panasonic DMC-FZ10 with a 4MP resolution and a whopping
12:1 optical zoom and a matching price. The other contender is the Canon S1-IS which is "only" 3.2MP and 10:1.Any one have any experience or comments on either of these cameras? Or any of the other "super zoom" digicams in the 3-4MP range? It seems that the most critical undocumented spec is shutter lag for pre-focused shots. Too many of the digicams (other than the SLRs) have so much shutter lag that all you'll get in a liftoff shot is smoke trail. Is 0.2 seconds fast enough? That's what steves-digicams says these two models will do. I think I'd have to go to an SLR to do any better.
If I'm gonna get one of these in time for NARAM, I have to make a decision in the next few days...
Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!