Category: Gear

The Panasonic Lumix DC-TZ95 is Garry’s newest camera. After many years and thousands of miles sitting in the bar bag on the front of Garry’s bike, his old Panasonic camera has given up the ghost!

Since his old Panasonic had been so reliable and had taken some good photos over the years, Garry decided to stick with the Panasonic brand. But which one should he buy? There were so many!

After looking online and getting very confused! Garry decided to head to his local camera store and seek some advice. Initially, Garry bought the Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82 4K Bridge Camera. Being a bridge camera, it’s a lot bigger than his old camera, but Garry was convinced it would be okay! It wasn’t! No matter how much he tried, it was just too big for his bar bag! And despite the DC-FZ82 being a great camera, taking some great photos, it was no good for going on a bicycle tour. And had to go!

Back at the store, Garry now went for a point and shoot camera! As he should have done in the first place! And went for the Panasonic Lumix DC-TZ95. Click here for all the technical specifications. They go way over Garry’s head and are better explained on the Panasonic website! All Garry knows is that it has a flip-screen and can take 4K photos!

Hopefully, Garry can get back to some serious touring soon and will get a chance to try out his new camera! But, until then, Garry will try it out on some day rides. You can view his efforts on the odd photos section of the website, which generally gets updated each month.

Garry’s updated his old phone to the brand new Samsung Galaxy S21 5G. After struggling with the memory of his old Samsung for the past year or two. He finally bit the bullet and upgraded! He was thinking of swapping over to an ios phone, but after thinking about it, he decided to stick with an Android phone. And what a difference it makes. With 256GB of storage and 8GB Ram, it’s lightning-fast and more than capable of handling all the apps Garry will ever need. At the moment!

The phone comes equipped with two decent cameras. The back camera is capable of taking 64mp photos and zoom up to 30x. While the front-facing camera is also of good quality at 10MP.

The Samsung Galaxy S21 5G also has dual sim capability. So when Garry finally gets back to touring abroad! He’ll be able to buy a local sim and use that along with his home sim and avoid those expensive roaming charges!

Although the phone is slightly bigger than his old one, at 152mm x 71mm x 7mm, it weighs 3 grams less. Which is still relatively small compared to some of the phones on the market!

Garry’s looking forward to getting back on the road to try out some of the new apps he’s downloaded, specifically for touring. Although he’s already using some new apps for work.

The GoPro Hero9 Black Garry’s latest kit addition. Now that Garry records all his bicycle tours for YouTube. And his old GoPro was a bit outdated. He decided he needed a new camera.

Deciding that his old GoPro had done a great job! Having spent thousands of miles sat on the front of his bike, without any problems! There really wasn’t anything else Garry could go for, apart from another GoPro! And the latest version the GoPro Hero9 Black.

It’s substantially different to his old GoPro, with the most obvious one being a screen to view what’s being recorded. In fact, there are two screens, one on the front, which will be handy for Garry to frame his ugly mug when talking to the camera! The other, as you’d expect, is on the back! (Not too sure how they’ll affect battery life? Time will tell!) There’s plenty of other updates and gadgets, most of which go over Garry’s head! More info on the GoPro website. Hopefully, Garry can get his head around some of the new features and manage to use them!

Along with the camera, Garry also bought a range of accessories. Amongst them and possibly the most useful, a Media Mod featuring a built-in directional mic with wind suppression. It also has a mount so Garry can attach a light. This could come in very handy when Garry’s filming some of his cookery videos, often at night.

Now Garry just needs the Covid-19 pandemic to be over and lockdown restrictions lifted, so he can get back to touring. And whilst there’s no doubt that the new GoPro Hero9 Black will improve the quality of videos, I doubt it will improve the content!