Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Within the next year, I will be moving to Florida. I want to get into photographing herps (and other wildlife) with a nice digital camera instead of the crappy digital I had. I want to be able to photo small salamanders as well as big alligators in the water, and everything in between. I want something that can handle that range. Any suggestions? I'm looking for something in the $600-700 range. Thank you in advance for any advice.

hi there... I've got a camera you might like, and it only costs about half of what you're saying you're willing to spend. I use a Panasonic DMC-FZ3. Canon or Nikon snobs won't give it the time of day because it's a Panasonic, but it's got a whole lot of nice features that I'm very very happy with. And as far as quality goes, Leica makes about the best lenses in the world, and this has got one on it.

As far as wildlife photography goes, it's got 12x optical zoom (4x digital, but I'd avoid using that if at all possible) so it works well for getting those long shots. 12x is the 35mm equivalent of a 420mm lens!

I've had quite a few photo sales from stuff produced by this camera. If you want to get a feel for what it can do, check out some of my stuff on here. There are wildlife pictures under my Outdoor album, and these all got resized by Photobucket, so there's actually a fair amount of detail lost on that page... http://photobucket.com/albums/y215/jrh312/

And just for good measure, here are a few of my favorite wildlife ones...

Here's some idea of the detail...take a look on this snapper's nose. That's a mosquito!

TrpnBils,

Being a "nikon snob" I will say that I was impressed with the Panasonic (I went on a herp trip here with a friend who had one) and I was surprized at the quality of the photos that said however:

In comparsion to the D70 or 350 or most other Dslr's you can't change lenses, its hard to get wide angle shots and I am yet to see a twin flash system for them. Also at 5mp most photo brokers won't touch the images (it seems they require 6 and up with the shots taken in RAW) Again I am unsure if the Panasonic has this setting.

Nice photos incidently ....where any cropped?

Regards,
Scott Eipper

haha, yeah sorry about the comment there. I've just had some HUGE issues with people on Canon photography forums that won't give me the time of day (even when I was looking into buying a Canon).

There are higher-pixel Panasonics floating around out there, and mine is by no means up there (3.2MP). And I know what you're saying with the publishers at a low level. The thing is though, you're not necessarily out of luck with a lower megapixel camera... I've gotten 4 photos published by the International Library of Photography with a 2.0MP camera. Since I've had this camera, I haven't tried to get anything published, but I have had quite a few sales.

As far as the photos there, the only one that was cropped was the spider one. The rest were all as-is with the exception resizing in photoshop (maybe some levels adjusted here or there, but nothing major). With this camera, I can still use all the filters I want, including Nikon 4T close-up filter that I used on all of those shots. That works real well with close-up wildlife shots because you can stay about a foot away (out of strike range for most snakes I've photographed, which is nice) instead of getting right in their face and scaring them.

Hi, Great photos. You have a good "eye" for composition and no brand of camera or amount of megapixels will help you formulate that artistic style. That said good equipment will make it much easier to get the shots you want. I had great luck with Coolpix 995,5700,8700. I even adapted Nikon's SB 21 Macro ring flash to the front as you might want to check out for lighting. The ability of point and shoots in the macro mode are amazing. I bit the bullet and move up to a Nikon SLR and there has been no looking back. I find that things like focus and composition and flash are all now in the background when I shoot. The equipment is secondary. I does cost a ton of money to get the macro capability that you have now and even more to get a 420mm f2.8 zoom. Thousands even. Check out some of the older DSLR's now like the D1 or D30 Nikon and Canon. They are now hundreds not thousands. The glass is what does not change and that is not cheap nor ever will be. For macro the Nikon 70-180mm Macro Zoom is one nice lens as is the Sigma 150mm Macro or Canon 180mm. I like the ability of the Nikon to zoom with out moving yourself or tripod. I have learned that a tripod or monopod is always a way to assure great shots. Hard to use when shooting a spitting cobra! More than a camera I think that education is the best investment. If publishers are giving you s#$T about too small Megapixels then just take your file in photoshop and upsize it via the image command. Resize it double what you have not and set the dpi to 360 then set the resample mode to "Bicubic Sharper". You will have a huge file that is still razor sharp.

With the new cameras coming out the prices of digital bodies will fall rapidly. I am now buying a Nikon 995 for 100 bucks that I paid 900 for 5 years ago!!

I would also suggest that you try bring you compact flash card to a camera shop and test shoot for yourself. Bring your Panasonic and compare. You are the best judge of you own work. When comparing always set up a tripod and try to shoot in manual with same shutter speeds and f-stop. Here is where point and shoots can cause me to scream when I'm trying to change settings like focus and f-stops. Burrowing through menu's is a real pain.

Happy snapping. Don't buy any used glass on eBay unless I'm selling it!!

Scott, here's where that close-up filter comes in handy for staying further away...he was not happy with me!

I did crop this one top and bottom a little bit - it blends in so well with the rocks/mud that I didn't want to "lose" the snake in the background.