FZ30...birds no....selling...yes ! (1 Viewer)

[Telecorder]

Or you can go with the new FZ50...

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz50/

And so, to sum up; for the serious user the FZ50 is without doubt the best equipped, best specified and best handling 'bridge camera' on the market today, and under the right conditions it produces superb output. It is a rewarding and enjoyable photographic tool that - once you've learned its quirks - offers a compact 'all-in-one' solution to anyone wanting a huge zoom range without all that lens changing and all that bulk.

:clap:

 

[debntexas]

Newbie to the forum...glad to see that I am not a complete idiot with the manual focus on this camera. I kept thinking I should be able to manually focus BETTER or to a finer degree than autofocus, but my manual focused shots seem worse 80% of the time. Now I think I will try a new tactic...keep the camera on center auto-focus, point at the birds eye, and let the camera do the work.

 

[bkrownd]

Newbie to the forum...glad to see that I am not a complete idiot with the manual focus on this camera. I kept thinking I should be able to manually focus BETTER or to a finer degree than autofocus, but my manual focused shots seem worse 80% of the time. Now I think I will try a new tactic...keep the camera on center auto-focus, point at the birds eye, and let the camera do the work.

No way you'll do better or faster than the AF computer. However, you also won't make the egghead mistakes that the AF computer does, either, and can distinguish subject from foreground/background better. Tradeoffs...

I usually focus on the branch the bird is standing on and its legs, because the AF works much better on foliage and branches than on the (camoflaged) bird. Sometimes I have to pick a branch/leaf/flower near the same distance if I can't see the bird's feet. If I try to AF on the bird's head it's guaranteed to lock on foreground or background foliage instead.