How odd is this now...Jessops just filed to go into administration. Whoops.
Pay peanuts ya get monkeys ;)

I had good and bad experience with Jessops who have not been able to compete with the lower priced lower price margin competitors. Years ago I would go into their main store in central London and in those days the guys knew their stuff. They had a good range of telescopes and marine binoculars as well even if they were high priced and out of my range it was fun to look. Back to bridge cameras. I tried the SX40 for the first time out in the bush and used it tangent with the Nikon DSLR 5000 for comparison taking the same subjects now and again. I took about 1000 photos and am still to sort through them even though I have them uploaded.

Im not surprized Jessops has gone to the wall they have been skating on thin ice for many years being brought back from the brink but this time there is no hero to step in. It is our fault of course as buyers we go to jessops and others to see touch and hold the products we desire and then we get on the net to find it at cheapest prices, Blockbuster, HMV, Comet, we all are resposible in large part for their demises. I remember the old films about a western town deserted except for tumbleweed blowing down the main street, thats the fate of most high streets I think & yes I do bu online

Mike

This is not the fault of the consumer, it is the fault of High Street chains not being able to compete with the online retailers. Jessops were never cheap, nor were Jacobs but I still bought from them as I could always go back to the shop if I had a problem. When Jessops last brought the administrators in I thought they'd be rescued to become an online only retailer and prices would come down but lessons were not learned.
Once all these High Street shops have been closed down people are going to regret not using them.
All we'll be left with is Currys.

Anyway, back on topic....bridge cameras are great. I've been increasingly impressed with the latest Panasonic TZ series of cameras. As a Canon fanboy I had an SX200 pocket camera with a 12x zoom, was great back then but now the TZ30 has a 20x zoom (intelligent 40x zoom) all in a small pocket sized unit.

I had a look last year at the TZ range and tried one out at Jessops St.Albans. Whilst the zoom range was not up to the Canon at the time the TZ image quality was superior in that it was clearer and did not have the blue abberation ( a blue tinge around the edge) which the Canon SX40 had at max zoom. I also liked the TZ having stereo mike sensors. I have found that wind break control on the canon is not that great so I am keeping an eye on the Panasonic range again.

It's mainly down to the Leica lens in the Panasonics, extremely good quality stuff. All Canon bridge cameras have always suffered from chromatic abberations, it's just one of the characteristics of their tiny sensors when coupled with a long reach lens.

I did not know Alan that all Canon cameras had that problem. I encountered the blurring on max zoom and had tried to reduce it in editing.

I am putting up two photos I took last week using the Nikon DSLR and the Canon bridge cam. The lens I used on the Nikon was a Tamron AF 70-300mm 1:4-5.6 Tele-Macro (1:2). I had it set on max zoom and the Nikon was set on sports mode as was the Canon. The weavers in the photos were about 50 feet away nesting above a river bed and a stream out in a swamp. The birds would not keep still and I could not use a tripod as the location was too risky from predators. In a nutshell it was a chance opportunity and quite unplanned.

Sunlight was strong and it was excessively hot at 37c :}

Had I had a more powerful lens on the Nikon, I think I could have brought more details of the Weaver and its nest into the picture. The nest is made from plains grasses and stripped palm leaves.

Clearly not all of us have the weather conditions or variety of wildlife philip to photograph, indeed if my memory is right the number of species indigenous to the uk has fallen significantly in past years.
But both photos are excellent backgound nicely diffused and hopefully colours not touched up too much !! Im with cartier bresson untouched by human hands lol.

Good to see the lions arent spoiling the shots maybe a monopod be useful ? for hitting them on the nose if nothing else lol just kidding

may ur lum lang reek

Really like the shot taken with the canon Phil. Iam feeding our birds in the garden like crazy at the moment as we have a blanket of snow. The bird feeders look like a scene from the film "Birds"

Mike I am in anticipation of you and M. Bresson blowing off yer cobwebs and getting your Nikon bridge and Nikon DSLR out hehehe

If you can't get out because of the weather, you could tease and entice us with some of your SLR shots from the old days as a comparison :} When I enlarged the Nikon photo I did get quite a lot of noise and used Lightroom 4 to smooth everything it out where it showed. I left the yellow alone.

Haste Ye Back!