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All but a few shots in the 2006 Alamo Bowl game photo gallery between the Texas Longhorns and the Iowa Hawkeyes were shot with the almost pocket-sized Minolta Z3 from high up in the endzone cheap seats. The The Minolta Z3 is is a few year old 4MP consumer superzoom that has massive noise and artifacts even at IS0 400. This is why the photos in this gallery are somewhat darker and generally underexposed in the shadow areas than the other galleries. I could have pushed them with some time and effort, but artifacts would become clearly evident on many shots. This camera is severely limited in it's ability to function in a domed athletic stadium environment. However, it did yield some usable output, albeit barely, as you see in this gallery.
This camera I received literally 10 minutes before I left for Chicago to catch the plane to the game. These were the very first pictures I captured with the camera. What a way to put an obsolete superzoom to the test, eh?
Note the focal lengths shown on the Z3's GT lens are 5.83-69.9mm which is the equivalent to a massive 35-420mm on a 35mm camera. You will see that the Minolta anti-shake works very well and I did gain an extra 2-3 stops on almost every photo. I really neede those extra stops because without AS those handheld 150-420 mm shots would have simply been impossible even for those with hands of stone.
-don
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