Georgebirds
Well-known member
A little backstory to this - a few years ago, my mum bought me a camera bag in a charity shop for a couple of pounds, she thought it might be useful. I could see at a glance that it was too small for my camera, and I don't actually like carrying it in bags anyway, so I said thanks for grabbing the bargain but not something I'd use, never mind, and we forgot all about it.
Yesterday, I found the bag, unzipped it, and inside was a camera. So lightweight neither of us had even noticed it was in there! Batteries, charger, cables and a uv filter in the side pockets. No idea how she managed to buy a whole camera without knowing, unless the charity shop had hung it up in the handbags'n'rucksacks section cos they also didn't realise it had contents, hah!
I had a quick google and realise it's a much older model and not an upgrade for my own current camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ330), or my very battered, broken, and frankly filthy old camera (Nikon Coolpix P80) which I keep as a backup and standby just incase anything happens to my main one. I really don't need a third camera in action, and I can't think of any situation where I wouldn't just choose my better one, so I'm thinking I might give the FZ7 to my mum, who doesn't have a camera at all.
Would this model be simple enough for a total beginner to pick up and use point-and-shoot? If I did the set-up stages, and popped it straight into Auto mode while she learnt the basics, does it seem like the sort of camera she'd figure out her way round easily?
She's always refused to take pictures on my camera, saying it's too big and too complicated and she doesn't want to mess it up (I'm not precious about my cameras - they go on horses and up trees and down in the dirt and out in the rain, so I've never presented them as a scary delicate things which must only be touched with respect and precision to have instilled this fear in her, hahah!)
She has no previous experience of digital photography at all, not into tech, and her only past camera was a 110 film one she'd have used from the mid 70s to mid 90s. As a small child I took one bird photo on that - the prints came back and I shuffled through them excitedly....to find my shot of a distant blurry dot which was only recognisable as a blackbird because I remembered sneaking up on him there, and decided I could not take nature photos after all, hah
Only problem is, the battery charger's got a US-style two-pin plug, and the batteries are just different enough from my own that they won't fit in its charger, so I can't check that the camera actually works right now! I'm going to ask round everyone I know to see if they've got one of those travel-adaptors for plug sockets, but I think as we're all living in the UK, people are more likely to have one which converts our three-pin plugs to use two-pin sockets overseas, than vice versa!
Yesterday, I found the bag, unzipped it, and inside was a camera. So lightweight neither of us had even noticed it was in there! Batteries, charger, cables and a uv filter in the side pockets. No idea how she managed to buy a whole camera without knowing, unless the charity shop had hung it up in the handbags'n'rucksacks section cos they also didn't realise it had contents, hah!
I had a quick google and realise it's a much older model and not an upgrade for my own current camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ330), or my very battered, broken, and frankly filthy old camera (Nikon Coolpix P80) which I keep as a backup and standby just incase anything happens to my main one. I really don't need a third camera in action, and I can't think of any situation where I wouldn't just choose my better one, so I'm thinking I might give the FZ7 to my mum, who doesn't have a camera at all.
Would this model be simple enough for a total beginner to pick up and use point-and-shoot? If I did the set-up stages, and popped it straight into Auto mode while she learnt the basics, does it seem like the sort of camera she'd figure out her way round easily?
She's always refused to take pictures on my camera, saying it's too big and too complicated and she doesn't want to mess it up (I'm not precious about my cameras - they go on horses and up trees and down in the dirt and out in the rain, so I've never presented them as a scary delicate things which must only be touched with respect and precision to have instilled this fear in her, hahah!)
She has no previous experience of digital photography at all, not into tech, and her only past camera was a 110 film one she'd have used from the mid 70s to mid 90s. As a small child I took one bird photo on that - the prints came back and I shuffled through them excitedly....to find my shot of a distant blurry dot which was only recognisable as a blackbird because I remembered sneaking up on him there, and decided I could not take nature photos after all, hah
Only problem is, the battery charger's got a US-style two-pin plug, and the batteries are just different enough from my own that they won't fit in its charger, so I can't check that the camera actually works right now! I'm going to ask round everyone I know to see if they've got one of those travel-adaptors for plug sockets, but I think as we're all living in the UK, people are more likely to have one which converts our three-pin plugs to use two-pin sockets overseas, than vice versa!
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