When it comes to electronic thingies, I’m an old boomer. This means I am midly technophobic when it comes to computers, software and digital cameras.
I used to handle the cameras with film pretty well 30 years ago when I worked as a journalist. But then my intellectual development in these matters was pretty much frozen when I was elected to the Australian Senate and found all these helpful people around whose major mission in life was to ensure that they were indispensable. This meant I became totally useless with things like travel bookings, computers, finding a decent restaurant and of course digital cameras.
After losing my Senate spot and all those helpful staff, I solved the problem by marrying a younger woman. Jeanine is generation X and loves all things technical. I just need to look old and marginally needy and she grimaces, grabs the computer and fixes it. When it’s to do with iPhones and more recent technology I call on the generation Y daughter, but that’s another story. Best not to mix the two.
Moving on, I was planning my next fly fishing trip when I saw the television advertisement for the Lumix waterproof camera, featuring a couple of outdoorsy types doing the Bear Grylls’ routine, skimming a waterproof camera across a stream to take pictures from the other side. I had to get one.
So I did. But then found myself eventually, after a fishing trip without Jeanine, having to download pictures and save them. I knew I’d taken a lot over Christmas … what with a new baby, a visit from the in laws, a fishing trip or two, but I didn’t know how many or what to do with them.
I tried to read the printed manual, but found it was mainly about how you kept the camera drained and dry. There was a CD which explained everything, but I apparently only had a DVD player in my computer, so that didn’t work. Then I remembered Jeanine saying these things could be downloaded directly, I think words “… even an idiot …” were used, so I dug out the connecting cord for the camera to the USB and … it worked.
It turns out I had up to 500 shots loaded on the Lumix hard drive, which took up about 10 gigabytes out of the 15 held in the camera. There’s no real need for flash cards at all and the battery had lasted for the full week of a trip to the Victorian High country without being charged once. Basically, I just shoved the camera into one of my fly fishing shirt top pockets, pressed down the Velcro seal on the pocket and wandered off.
I don’t know what more to say about this little beauty. You can shove it in your pocket for a week, use it daily, above and under the water, fall into the water, drop it a few times while taking shots of fish underwater, fall off a small cliff, shove it in a travel bag, pull it out at the end of the trip and download 500 shots, given extremely limited software skills. I’m not sure what else a digital camera is supposed to do.
But the real reason I wanted to be able to download the shots myself was that I’d taken the Lumix into the birthing suite for the arrival of our second child and I wanted to see if they’d worked before consulting Jeanine in case I’d mucked it up.
Judge for yourself. Below is the love of my life and new son John, aka Jack.
