Wildlife With a Compact

Pick up any good photography magazine and you’re likely to see wildlife photographs of outstanding quality. Read the picture captions and you’re most likely to find that the photographer has used some very high end equipment often costing in the £1,000’s. It’s often thought that to achieve really top notch images you need expensive gear but that’s not necessarily the case. Back in my youth I had a small exhibition of photographs taken wholly using my first camera, a Halina 120 roll film jobbie; I’ve still got it, by the way. I believe that it’s the person behind the camera who makes the picture not the equipment used.

That is not to say that expensive equipment doesn’t help, it does. A fine piece of Nikon or Leica glass on the front of your camera is going to help tremendously. But you can achieve very satisfactory results using far more affordable kit. I set out to prove this shortly after getting my TZ-10.

A rather large spider had spun a web in the garden and on a rare sunny August evening I took the little Panasonic down the garden and using the macro zoom setting took a few very pleasing pictures. Since then I’ve been on the look out for more wildlife images to take using compacts. So far the Panasonic has been the most successful mainly because of its superior specification but I have one or two nice shots from my Leica. All are hand held primarily because there’s no facility for a cable release and the fact that using the time exposure function isn’t very accurate; the “decisive moment” is lost.

Here’s some of the images:

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Panasonic DMC TZ-10

I dropped on a real bargain from Jacob’s in Liverpool to supplement my Leica C-Lux 3; a Panasonic DMC TZ-10 compact camera. What a grand little camera it has turned out to be getting lots of use alongside my Leica. Both comapcts have been bought for those times when I don’t feel like lugging my full Nikon kit around, which during the poor summer in the UK has been quite often.

The TZ-10 has a Leica DC 25mm lens and a 12.1MP sensor, lots of programme modes and “scene” settings. It’s light, easy to use and produces some wonderful images. It fits neatly in my pocket, is quick to start and quite unobtrusive in use. I’ve used it for street photography, sunsets, landscapes, portraits using natural light, flash and mixed light - which it handles very well indeed - architecture, wildlife and nature, simple record shots and macro.

The Leica DC lens is superb being very sharp at most apertures. Focusing is quick and accurate although sometimes it struggles a little if there’s a “busy” background. Exposure is also good but I’ve found that 1/3rd stop under exposure makes for richer colours; there’s a little too much noise at higher ISO ratings. I’m sure there’s a way round that! So far I’ve had to do very little post-processing and I’m very satisfied with the results particularly in mixed light situations.

The TZ-10 is now discontinued hence the bargain prices they were being sold for but if you’re considering a compact I can’t praise the Panasonic range highly enough - good quality, good value and great results. Several friends have Panasonic’s in one form or another and the images I’ve seen are very good indeed.

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The images were taken on two separate street photography trips to Liverpool using the TZ-10. The colour one is a panorama using two shots stitched together in Elements while the monochromes were processed using Silver EfexPro 2.