Panasonic Lumix Cameras Leica Lenses Without the Leica Prices. New to me DMC-TZ3.

October 10, 2018

#280

Gentle reader,

I have many hobbies. But, being retired, I have limited income. I was later getting into the Digital camera game than most people. In fact, my incredible wife bought me my first, and come to think of it, second digital cameras. Both Fujifilm Finepix models. The first was a whopping 1.3 megapixels. She bought it for me to help with eBay listings. She later bought me a 6.3 megapixel model which had insane macro capability, focusing down to 1/2 an inch! But they are not what this is about.

This is mainly about the new-to-me camera hidden in this box. We visited a flea market at the local VFW and I spied this box. It was marked $35. I took a look at it, battery was dead, but the seller assured me that it would work. So, for $20., it came home with us.

I have been carrying this DMC-ZS7 camera in my pant's cargo pocket for years. It's a 12.1 megapixel sensor, has a Leica Vario-Elmar 25-300mm (35mm equivalent) zoom lens, Mega-Optical-Image-Stabilization, etc., etc.

As you can see, it has some wear to it. I've never had a problem with it, except sometimes the selector switch on the top has gotten turned away from the automatic setting. This throws me for a second until I see what is wrong.

Caveat #1: I deliberately do NOT have a "smart" phone. I see too many people, head down absorbed in whatever digital world they are seeing and having NOTHING to do with the real world around them. No situational awareness whatsoever. I do not want to be a phone zombie.  

Caveat #2: I have never made a video. When I tried with my FZ40 at a vintage sports car race, the video came out way overexposed. 

With that said, let me introduce you to my latest Leica lens equipped Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 camera:

As far as I can tell, everything that came in the box was still there. The only other one I have that came in the box is my DMC-LX3.

Similar lens to the DMC-ZS7, but it is 28-280mm. Not quite as wide or as long a reach. Lens is stabilized as well.

One thing about these cameras that completely hide the lens is unless you look at the lens when it's on, you are not going to notice if it's dirty. I cleaned it after seeing this picture.

The body and the lens assembly are thicker than the red camera. But, it slides into my magazine pouch inside my 5.11 Tactical cargo pockets just fine.

Both terminal receptacles are different from the red one, but I never use these anyway, preferring to remove the memory to transfer the images. Speaking of memory, it had "only" a One gigabyte card. So, I put in a much larger one. "Only". I remember when one gigabyte hard drives came out. A computer store many miles from here was selling a One gigabyte hard drive for $99.! My wife volunteered to drive up there and get one for us. Granted our first computer, hers actually, had a 40 Megabyte hard drive. Yes, Mega, not Giga, and certainly not Tera.

These are the total controls on the back. 

Top and bottom, scratch-free. I like.

Now, I will show you a view of the more filled red camera's top plate:

GPS? Why? As I stated, I do not do videos, so the microphones are useless to me as well.

Now I will show you a side-by-side comparison of the Red verses the Black models:

The same, but different. The black one "only" has 7.2 megapixel sensor. Since I can only print 8 1/2" by 14" photos, and only have 8 1/2" by 11" photo paper, anything over 6 megapixels is wasted. Note, no mention of video on the black one.

More switches on the red one, mostly devoted to making videos. Same size LCD screen. Ugh! Dusty! Digital photos, especially seen on a large, wide screen, such as my 23 inch model, show everything not seen, even with reading glasses. 

Before I tell you my conclusions, let me show you the other Lumix cameras I have owned and enjoyed. 

This was a thrift store find. The largest pixel count and thinnest body. Still, it has a Leica lens. The DMC-FH25. 

The access door would not stay closed, which is maybe why it was donated. An easy fix. A little too feminine a color for me, so onto eBay it went.

My first "bridge" camera was my second Fuji model. I made so many images with it, the counter had to start over again. My first bridge Lumix was this one:

Lumix DMC-FZ8. 7.2 megapixels. 

Widest end is only 36mm (35mm equivalent).

Nice hand grip to hold on to.

LCD screen way bigger than the Fuji had.

And, of course, a Leica lens. This one a Vario-Elmarit. Fairly quick too at f2.8-3.3. Plus an aspherical element or two.

My favorite by far of the compact models, and my first Lumix camera is the DMC-LX3. To my limited knowledge, this camera with it's Vario-Summarit, has the finest Leica lenses in the Lumix line. Virtually identical to the Leica D-Lux 4. As you can see by these photos pulled from two closed eBay auctions:

Here's the thing. To buy that camera, with that red plastic dot, one would have had to pay nearly TWICE what the Panasonic camera cost! Just to be able to say, "Check out my new Leica."

Every surface, except for the hand grip the Lumix has and the D-Lux does not, every control, even the lens, is EXACTLY the same as the much more expensive Leica. Why pay more?

I have my LX3 right in front of me, as I study each photo, I examine my camera. Exactly the same.

It has been said about many luxury things, and even tools. "You pay for the name." A wrench or socket from SEARS, makers of CRAFTSMEN  tools, will turn that bolt exactly the same way as a Snap-on tool will. You will just pay a LOT more for the Snap-on name. Same with these cameras.

You may not know the rest of the Leica/Panasonic story. Every person who knows cameras, knows that Leica is one of those halo names. It is legendary in fact. So, why are they selling Panasonic cameras with their name (and red dot) on it?

The way I understand it is this, Leica wanted into this new digital camera game, but only really knew how to make expensive cameras. Earlier than this, they had been doing what the American car companies have been doing for decades. Can't make a decent small car? Make a deal with foreign car companies to sell some of THEIR cars with your company's name on it. It's nick-named: Badge Engineering.

I had a "Leica" camera called the ZX2. The only thing is, it was a Panasonic camera. Here is the box and papers that came with it and photos of the camera:

All that official looking papers which appear to have come directly from Germany. Except, no part of this camera was made in Germany. OK, maybe the red plastic dot.

It was a nice camera, made nice photos. But it and earlier point-and-shoot cameras with the Leica name on them were not made by Leica either.

Ever heard of the Leica CL? Or a Minolta camera sold as the Minolta CLE? One can mount Leica M lenses on both. In fact, the 40mm lens that came with both of them are real Leica lenses. The bodies are smaller than traditional Leica bodies are.

Panasonic had the experience making good small cameras and had been in the digital camera field for a while. A deal was struck, Leica would provide the lenses for the cameras and Panasonic would provide the bodies, sensors, etcetera. Badge engineering with a twist: Hybrid cameras, if you will. I'll take the Lumix every day of the week.

Back to Panasonic Lumix cameras. I wanted more "reach" than the FZ8 bridge camera offered. So I looked at eBay and read specifications and reviews of the various Lumix bridge cameras. I decided that the Lumix DMC-FZ40 would fit the bill just fine.

14 megapixels, a 24X zoom with 35mm equivalent of 25-600mm! The aperture is variable from f2.8-5.2. Can you imagine how big, heavy and expensive a 35mm or even APS-C sized lens would be with those specifications? 

And here it is, fully at attention. I was going to say erect, but you know, wouldn't want to offend someone.

Nice big screen, too. The one thing I wish my LX3 had was an eye-level viewfinder, like this one has. Later models offered an extra cost electronic viewfinder than slipped on the flash shoe and plugged into the back right below the shoe. The later D-Lux Leicas were that way too! "Oh, my, God!"

I had bought an M39 (Leica-screw or thread) to Nikon F adapter knowing full well that the lenses would not focus anywhere near infinity. Someone said, "Why don't you buy a micro four thirds camera?" At first I thought, I can't afford that. Then I started looking on eBay and found to my delight that I could and DID afford one!

Here it is sporting the Soviet Jupiter 3 50mm f1.5 lens which is a copy of the Zeiss Sonnar Opton lens. I won't go into that historical story. 

When I first got interested in digital cameras, I was looking at Lumix models similar to the TZ3. I don't remember the exact model. Why? Leica lenses. And I could get it in blue.

To my knowledge, the G1 is THE very first M4/3 camera made. I chose a G1 because of price, and I wanted a blue one.  

Here is my Canon 100mm f4.0 lens.

Here the Jupiter 11 135mm f4.0 lens. I also have the 85mm f2.0 Jupiter 9 lens.

So, I outfitted the blue body with a used 14-42mm G.Vario lens. I was able to buy a brand new Lumix 45-150mm lens. I chose Panasonic lenses because of the built-in image stabilization. There are plenty of Olympus M4/3 lenses, but they do not offer that st-ability.

Here is the camera with a number of other lenses that fit it via adapters. The aforementioned 85mm lens is mounted on the body. I have adapters for: Leica M39, M42, T-mount, Pentax 110 and Nikon F lenses. And there are untold other adapters that fit these superb cameras.

OK, I've captured your attention for long enough. Many of the images of Lumix cameras came from previous articles that I had written about them. Here are links to two previous ones that are Lumix specific:
Using Vintage Film Camera Lenses on Digital Camera Bodies PART THREE.
Using Vintage Film Camera Lenses on Digital Camera Bodies PART TWO. 
I KNOW there is a PART ONE, but I am not able to pin it down, I've written a lot. Then and today. It's late and I'm tired.

Thank you SO much for taking the time to read my humble blog, when I get interested in something, I do a lot of research and learn as much as I can about it. Since I began blogging, I have written about many of my interests and hobbies, too.

Anyway, thanks again. I enjoy the writing, but it is a lot of work and your kind comments make it all worthwhile.  

Scott
October 10, 2018
#280 

Classical Music Format Collecting. They All Have Roundness to Them: LP CD TAPES

October 5, 2018

#279

Gentle reader,

I belong to a number of FaceBook groups of people with whom I share interests. I used to belong to a number of LP record groups, but some of the members were.....I'll not say.

I did recently join one devoted to collecting LP vinyl records filled with Classical music. 

I'd previously written about the hobby but from the standpoint of learning about the composers and musicians (and orchestras) that created and/or recorded the music.

Learn More About Your Music, Your Stereo & Speaker Building. To Make The Best Of Your Listening Experience  

I am 62 and grew up in a home that often had music playing. Dad had a fairly good stereo based upon what he earned as a Presbyterian minister. He and Mom had varied taste, but Dad like classical which certainly influenced my interest in it.

I also like: Classic Rock, Pop, Comedy, Film and Television Scores (often referred to as "Soundtracks") Jazz, both Smooth and what I call Traditional, Big Band, Classical of course, and even a little Bluegrass. As long as they don't sing. I even have a couple Country CDs. I found both separately, both are autographed and both happen to be beautiful women. Pretty good music.

This is the Classical LP shelves. They are two, but connect to make one. An incredible thrift store find! It appears they were purpose built to house LP records. 

This was another, earlier, thrift store find and it too seems to have been (home) made to hold records. I will get around to finishing the wood that the builder did not get around to. It resides in the closet of the listening room.

It has all the Jazz LPs, Big Band as well as Pop such as Frank Sinatra and other singers. Also holds Herb Alpert and spin offs from him, Al Hirt too. I like trumpet music. 

Further down are miscellaneous such as International music, Spoken word, Comedy, Historical and Test LPs.

Here is where it all began. This is a cabinet I made from white walnut wood. The type of walnut trees that provide edible walnuts. Rather than black walnut. Inedible nuts, but gorgeous, dark wood. I was 19 at the time and I bought the wood from my girlfriend's father. He taught me how to construct panels from multiple pieces of wood and other techniques of joinery.

The top shelves hold Classic rock and Pop. Bottom shelves house the film and TV scores. Some of them, mostly my wife's are ones with music (not the score) that was featured in the movies. Usually rock or pop artist's works.

This oaken rack was a thrift store find. Must have been made from a kit. It houses 300 CDs. I wrote about my rebuilding and finishing it here:

Thrift store found: solid oak CD rack restoration profile

This shelf and the small rack upon it holds box sets both within and without. Mostly Classical, including one or two which are SACD sets. The blue one on the left is the most expensive CD I have. The Score to Galaxy Quest. My wife spent $65 to get me that CD!

This rack holds 200 CDs and contains the rest of the SACD and HDCD collection. It also holds all my Herb Alpert CDs, Classic Rock, newer Rock and Pop, the two Country CDs and I don't recall what else.

This is a mishmash of three racks. Top holds 100 cassettes of various genres. Both mine and my wife's. In front of it are the three deluxe 2-CD sets of Scores from the three Hobbit films. The middle and right one look funny because they both had flash hot-spots. I eliminated the white spots by replacing it with the color of the boxes.

Beneath that is W to Z of Jazz, then traditional Jazz, Mix CDs of Smooth Jazz, Jazz used in films, Western film Score compilations and compilations of other film Scores.

Bottom is the latest addition and simply did not have any room to mount it vertically. Sigh. It has some modern versions of Big Band as well as original artist stuff both compilations and artist specific. To the right are from the last resurrection of Big Band and modernization thereof. Cherry Popin' Daddies and others. From the 1980's, if I recall. There was a briefer one in the 1970's when Big Band was set to a Disco beat. I have a couple of those on LP. Fun to listen to. One is on clear yellow vinyl.

The biggest for last. This 400 CD rack holds most of the Jazz and most of the film Scores collections. As you can see, I prefer CD storage that holds them horizontally. A PITA* to add new ones since each that will be alphabetically below the new ones must be removed and moved down one at a time.  

*Pain In The Ass.

Now, you may be thinking, "Cassettes are rectangular." Yes, but they have tiny round tape reels inside of them. I had reel-to-reel decks in the past, but never collected prerecorded tapes, and decided that they served me no real purpose.

With a CD recorder, middle shelf, on the left, I can copy or compile mix-CDs, record from LPs and even  cassettes, and listen to them in the car or elsewhere. The only portable cassette player I have is a Walkman-style one. I never use it. I do have new blank Chromium-Dioxide tapes if I do decide to make some tapes.

Now that I've shown you my entire music collections, let me get back to the subject at hand. Collecting Classical music. 

As you no doubt know, "Classical" is generic term for what is sometimes referred to as "Western music". Not to be confused with "Country and Western". Western as opposed to Eastern music, that which originates from Asian countries and composers. The time-frame starts many hundreds of years ago and continues to present day composers. Generally it refers to music made for instruments used in orchestras. Whether solo works for piano or violin, for instance, all the way to massive works which might have hundreds of musicians and a large chorus of singers.

I will not go into the different eras of Classical music those can be learned elsewhere. My preference is Orchestral, the bigger the better. Do I like chamber music? Sure, if I'm in the mood. I don't have a lot of it. Preferring later chamber music. Such as Copland's Appalachian Spring which was originally written for chamber orchestra. For example I agree that Mozart was brilliant. But I don't really care for most of his works. I think I have one LP of his music. Heresy? Nah. Just my preferences.

As far as Baroque, I have most of the more popular works in the collection. No self-respecting Classical music lover would not have some Baroque. But generally I feel that it is overplayed, at least on our local Classical station. And earlier than that, no thank you. Sure, some of it is moving music, just not my thing.

I did take the extremely long time to go through all my LP records, one at a time and enter them into Excel spreadsheet programs for all of the genres. I wrote about that in a three part series. The last is linked below. Previous chapters are linked in the article.

COMPLETED: Creating a searchable database of all my thousands of LP recordings.

My oldest LP is from 1949, shown below. And it is of my favorite Opera. In fact the only opera which I own. I have several versions of Boris Godounov on LP and CD.

See, lower left corner, above: "copyright, 1949, columbia records, inc." I don't know why it's in lower case.

All my collections are all alphabetized, with the exception of the "Various Composers" Classical LPs which are by label. I also separated the Mono from the Stereo. I at one time tried to have a separate mono music system, then realized it was silly. 

My collection exceeds 3000 discs and I doubt that I will ever listen to them all. I even stopped buying music after completing the database. But eventually started buying again. You either have the collecting gene, or you do not.

You probably also know this: a Song must have Singing. If there is no singing, it is a Piece of music. Or a tune, if you prefer. Or even a Work. I know, I'm a bit anal.

Two of my all-time favorite Classical works are Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I have not counted them in a while, but I have a LOT of each of them. Both large, grandiose pieces, for sure. But that is what I told you earlier that I liked.

Final words. We moved to Richmond, Virginia from Denver, Colorado right after I graduated from high school in the 1970's. Every 4th of July, the Richmond Symphony performs at a place called Dogwood Dell. It has a natural amphitheater. Behind the bandstand is where they place the howitzer canons from Fort Lee. One cannot see them unless you are off to the side or way up at the top. I would climb to the top as the 1812 played and ease my way over to the left side. I wanted  to  watch the canons fire. Of course, the 1812 Overture in condensed form, is the last piece they played.

There are three sensations to explosions, in the order received by our brains: Sight, then Sound, then Concussion. Granted they are firing blanks, and probably low loads of powder since many people are nearby. But as a teen who played Army as a kid, seeing, hearing and feeling those canons fire, WOW it was awesome!

I want to thank you, once again for taking the time to read my humble blog. When I set out all those years ago, it was just something to do. Little did I dream that people, lots of people would actually read and enjoy my writing and photographs. But it is each readers choice to click on that link and start to read. You chose to do that, and I thank you. You, make it all worthwhile.

Scott

October 5, 2018

#279