NEW CAMERA

Yes, this is still a flying Blog!  I flew to Tauranga today via the Waihi Gap, taking a work colleague and his son with me.  I will post the details of that flight (it was great - "Stunning" was my friend's comment) on a later post.  It was a chance to try out the camera I recently bought, a Canon PowerShot SX30IS.  This is a super zoom "compact" (actually the size of a small SLR) with a 24-840!!!! zoom lens.  I was attracted by the zoom range and a number of favourable reviews and thought it would be a better travel companion than an SLR with a selection of lenses and would be more versatile than a true compact.  Early days yet, but I am quite impressed.  A selection of today's efforts is below:

Hamilton visitors and residents;

ZK-TMR: Grumman-American AA-5A Cheetah - registered to a Mount Maunganui address - our own Alpha, WCD in the background

ZK-DNG: Cessna 206 from Skydive Waikato, Matamata.  They were parachute dropping over Karapiro today.

DNG with a happy (?) band of "meatbombs" aboard taxis out.

ZK-FLO: Piper PA-28-140 also registered to a Mount address, and ZK-TSD: Piper PA-34 Seneca registered locally and usually parked here

At Tauranga;

ZK-FNB Another Seneca - Air Discovery's one - close to widest angle for this

ZK-MJD Titan T51 Mustang - registered locally.  840mm zoom from the opposite end of the runway (almost) and cropped to about 2/3 original area

MJD again - about 500mm zoom here - no crop.  I am quite impressed!

ZK-YAC Yak-52 one of the "classics" based at Tauranga

So, a bunch of snaps from today, hope you like them.  I will post about today's flight sometime later (within a couple of days, hopefully).