Equipment Is it worth upgrading this?

hi guys

right i currently own a old Panisonic Lumix LZ5 (about 3 years old now) which i got to take on honeymoon to egypt with me, now this has served me quite well in those years as i do not do a great deal of photography so am basically a point and shoot guy

now this is my problem, i have just had my birthday and have been given about £150, on top of this my brother has told me that he wants to take me and my family to Centre Parcs at Longleat with a day or 2 going around longleat so i have been wondering if it would be worth upgrading my camera,

now what i want in a camera is generally simple,
good auto function
decent optical zoom (due to wanting something to take to longleat where you cant garentee that they will be close to you)
good image stablisation
and of course good pictures (which i will probably not ever want to print bigger than A4)

having had a look around quickly the main camera that seems to keep coming up is the Fuji s1500 now this seems like a decent camera from the reviews and has got a good zoom but what i am wondering is if it would be worth while as a upgrade to my old one, or do you think the old one is not that far behind that it really wouldnt be that much of a upgrade?

cheers all

 

Then no, it's not worth upgrading your camera. Learn to use the one you have properly first.

 

+1 on not upgrading. 6mp is a perfectly appropriate size. I still use my Nikon D50 in a professional capacity and it is the same resolution.

My opinion on point and shoots is to keep them until they absolutely drop dead (all of mine in the past have but one). There is no new innovation on any model camera that makes it an absolutely must-have. People are taking remarkable images with i-phones. If there is something you absolutely can't do with the model you have then let's talk.

 

cheers guys,

to be honest the main thing i was thinking about is the increased zoom from 6x to 12x with going to Longleat Safari Park,

i know the mega pixels things is generally a sales gimic for most people who will probably never go above A4 when printing so that wasnt what i was looking at

 

If it's a one time event, consider renting a body and lens.

 

To be fair the resolution might be the same but the sensor size and quality of the optics are a lot different.

I'm all for not upgrading just for the hell of it though too. The only thing that that might be lacking on the current camera is the zoom as you suggested and I gues HD video? The 6mp resolution and quality of your current camera is perfectly fine.