Category: Apple

panasonic lumix dmc-ts20

whbeebe
Very old camera on an old iPhone 11 Pro Max for scale

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS20 (hereafter referred to as the TS20) is a camera that was introduced in 2012, some twelve years ago. I purchased two copies, one for my wife, and a second as a backup in case my beloved managed to destroy the first copy. My beloved is hell on technology, but I digress…

We used the cameras on a road trip up to Toronto the same year I’d bought the cameras. We’d purchased a pair of 2012 Toyota Priuses, one black and one white. The white one was mine and that was the one we took on the Canadian road trip. The TS-20 worked marvelously, and I used mine when we took the Niagara Falls boat trip. I managed to pick up some interesting (for us) photos as we traveled right up into the mists at the bottom of the falls.

My wife used hers for a while until one day I put them into storage until we decided to take them out and use them for, whatever. Unfortunately we both forgot about them in the ensuing years. In late 2012 I had my first knee operation, then in 2013 I got laid off, and then I got another job that had lots of travel including my first overseas trip to Japan that December, and then events began to jumble together and I lost track of a lot of things, the cameras being a minor part of that. I guess the reason I blog is to document enough so that I can go back and be reminded of what I can no longer remember…

What’s interesting about this camera is its sensor, a 1/2.33″ CCD 16MP sensor with IBIS. Keep in mind that when this camera came out Panasonic was working with Olympus on the micro four thirds standard, so I suspect that some of that in-house expertise spilled over into other cameras that Panasonic was still making at the time. But not with the sensor. The micro four thirds cameras all used CMOS. It was only the earliest prior four thirds cameras that used CCD sensors, such as the Olympus E-1.

When I found the cameras, of course I couldn’t find the chargers. That would have been too logical for me to store the chargers with the cameras. I looked everywhere, but in the end wound up buying a pair of Wasabi Power chargers, along with a pair of Wasabi Power BTR-BCK7-JWP batteries. What is surprising is that the Wasabi battery at 1100 mAh has nearly double the energy capacity of the Panasonic’s 680 mAh capacity. I did manage to charge both the original Panasonic batteries as well as the Wasabi batteries, which provides me with plenty of extras for when I go out and use this very-old-but-new-to-me-again camera.

Using the TS20 is a lot like using a cell phone these days for taking photos. You hold it up to compose on the rear screen, then press the shutter on the top edge, and then you’re done. For example:

Walmart Marketplace
Abandoned CVS drug store

Open up either of those photos, taken in full Florida sun, and you’ll see grain galore in the shadows. So much detail is lost that if you enlarge the CVS photo and try to read the handicap signage, you can’t. But I don’t care. I like the colors and I like the camera, and as I’ve said so ofter all that matters now is enjoying the use of the camera and the results. And I do enjoy using this camera. If I want flesh-cutting sharpness I have more cameras and lenses than I can shake a stick at. It might be interesting to take the output of this camera and see if there’s an AI tool that can smooth the noise and upscale resolution so I could read the handicap signage.

The TS20 also calls out another problem with The Present, and that’s with our abandoning of cameras such as the TS20. I’ve often wondered what would such a camera be like with up-to-date sensors and electronics. Because I can tell you from my current perspective I’ve discovered I much prefer the handling of the Panasonic over the Apple. Oh well…

here’s to trailing edge tech

whbeebe1 Comment

I’m writing this post on my second generation 12.9” iPad Pro, running with ipadOS 17.5.1. That iPad was introduced June of 2017, seven years ago. I didn’t purchase it until nearly two years later when Apple put in under serious markdown in the local Apple store. Because the store didn’t have much of a choice at that time, I wound up with an iPad with 512 GiB of storage and cellular connectivity. I never signed up for another line to connect the iPad, as I could simply couple my iPad to my iPhone for what little wireless connectivity I needed.

I’ve been reading lately about how people are hanging onto their iDevices for longer and longer periods, usually measured in two, or three, or maybe even four years. I beat them all with my seven years of usage with this iPad, and seven years of usage with my iPhone 11 Pro Max. Just like my iPad, my iPhone is still being updated with iOS.

I suspect that iOS/ipadOS 18 will be the last major OS upgrade for either device. If that happens, and if both devices are still operational, I doubt I’ll rush right and and purchase replacements. Just because I won’t get the latest feature doesn’t mean the devices still won’t be highly useful to me. I’m typing in this post using a Logitech case-and-keyboard that I purchased at the same time I purchased the iPad, and it too is still working just fine. In the early days of ownership I was all excited about making this my personal computer. That didn’t quite work out as intended, as I needed a personal computer for a lot more than just content consumption and the occasional bit of creative work, such as this blog post.

Furthermore, the state of ipadOS at the time didn’t allow for complicated work, in spite of Apple’s cheerful advertising to the contrary. In the end I gave up on it and the iPad sat on the shelf for quite a while, until Pandemic Lockdown hit, and I resurrected it for a lot of web viewing. While the iPad was “resting,” Apple was busy making changes and releases to ipadOS, so that when I started to use the hardware again I began to appreciate the software. The software has improved to the point where, at this specific point in time, I would stack it up against a Chromebook, such as the Lenovo model I currently own.

This post is being typed into WordPress’ web editor inside Safari. Everything works as it should inside Safari. I know people like to hate on Safari, and at times I do as well, but there are a lot more times where Safari just fades into the background, which any good browser should.

In the early days of ownership I tried to use a Logitech MX Ergo trackball mouse, and I managed to do that. Unfortunately as I grew to use the combination I discovered that am iPad doesn’t handle a  mouse very well. The way the mouse pointer was rendered on the screen didn’t help matters at all. Instead I started to use the original Apple Pencil to randomly select any spot on the screen, an action I continue to this day. It is with just a touch of irony that the Apple Pencil is a lot more useful on a touch device such as the iPad, in spite of Steve Job’s stylus comment:

So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with – born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers. We’re going to touch this with our fingers. And we have invented a new technology called multi-touch, which is phenomenal. It works like magic.

That was back in 2009, when multi-touch was new and shiny. A lot changed from 2009 because a lot was learned in the intervening years before Apple released its Pencil. But I digress…

I like trailing tech. It winds up being a lot cheaper to acquire and own than the leading edge tech. It always does what I need doing. A perfect combination of low cost and more than adequate capability.