New Camera

As readers may have noticed I try to capture some nice photos for this blog with varied results. I have slowly become more interested in obtaining better results and so I am going to get a new camera.

Many years ago before digital cameras I had a Canon SLR however I found I rarely took it anywhere due to the size so ever since have used compact cameras and a few years years spent playing with video. However like many amateur photographers I have always wanted a camera that was small like a compact and yet had SLR abilities. Recently this idea has become real.

Olympus and Panasonic have released cameras in a format called Micro Four Thirds. These cameras are larger than a compact but still reasonably small and have large sensors with the ability to interchange their lens. After waiting for prices to fall I decided to get one. Both are more than my amateur shooting needs, initially I was going to get the Panasonic GF1 which was cheaper here online than the Olympus, however the GF1 has no in camera stability so you rely on and are limited to their lenses to provide this. I am not the most steady of hands and have no room for a tripod on a bike so anti shake was a deciding factor. An Olympus came up on a USA site at a price 2/3rds of here - but alas they only sell and ship to US addresses - thats when I joined Shipito.com freight forwarders.

You will see their banner above, I liked the idea so much I wanted to tell everyone. With a USA address you can shop all the places that only serve US residents. Many of these are cheaper than their counterparts that offer international shipping and they will mostly ship within US for free - so you get it to the forwarder for zero. Then you select what method to send it to Aus, no more ridiculously steep shipping prices. This opens alot of doors, eBay.com rather than just eBay.com.au (pricing variance can surprise) Electronics at Amazon, which is very often much cheaper than eBay but doesn't ship electronics outside USA. Buy motorcycle gear from New Enough.com and get it free to the forwarder then post airmail instead of New Enough's very expensive international shipping. Access the other US bike shops that don't ship international or if they do want as much in shipping as the item. The list goes on.

Anyway hope I can take some better looking photos in the future.