For years, I have restrained myself from getting a DSLR and yet I managed to live, just let my N82 capture the instants, and still rather effectively tell a tale with my shots, humility aside. However, as days turned to months, moreso after Sony had so kindly let me use some of their flagship cameras earlier this year, I began to crave for more shooting equipment power.

You see, for me to produce a decent collection of photos, I will have to compose with the mobile phone’s camera limitations in mind (very limited “manual” tweaks available, a rather slow response time, no optical zoom function, etc.), making sure that I compensate the shortcomings of the instrument with well pieced together elements within my control, pre-shot. After I transfer the files into a PC, I look at each photo closely, scrutinizing the littlest details, and, if I’m lucky, I will only be daunted to do minor crops and saturation adjustments before I can show the final output to the world.

Since I’m a sucker for toy photography set in the dark, using only an LED caving lamp most of the time, I’d have to suck all my frustrations up and live with the digital noise infestation. Post processing then is a must rather than a luxury I could do without. Doing the composing in-cam (for me) may have been next to impossible, but I’ve done it. That so-called SOOC. Once. The photos may not have lived up to even the lowest of photography standards but when I got a flickr comment from a person I do not even know which read, “You gave it a soul. Great job,” I felt I got it made. LOL

After three weeks of asking around, reading internet reviews, and a very helpful phone-in dialogue with Drew, I gave in to getting my second point and shoot camera (after the Canon Ixus i5 I bought in Taiwan around 4 years ago). Behold, the Panasonic Lumix ZS3: made by voyeurs FOR voyeurs. Er, not really, but with its 12x optical zoom and Leica lens, that, too, can be possible.

Let me share with you one great feature of the ZS3 and one that I had been wanting to have for a while, too. HD video capture with optical zoom operation baybee, yeah!

Camphone, you have served me well. I’m still taking you wherever so I think we’ll still be doing some sweet projects soon, although not as often as before. You see, I’m just a lowly human answering the nagging call of grandeur. I know you’d understand.

More photos from my recent trip coming very soon.