Reptile & Amphibian Forums

...and hours of painstaking informative searching I think Imma gunna buy a Panasonic Lumix DMC - FZ5 as I have to have a point-and-shoot for herping.

Anyone have one of those? Know someone who does?

Hate the name? Smells funny?

I appreciate any and all comments.

Thanks in advance,

Chris

Chris,

I haven't ever used the camera, but it looks pretty nice based on DPreview's comments.

There are a couple of things that concern me, however. If you intend to "move up" in your herp photography, you might want a camera that allows you to use an external flash. This camera doesn't have a hot shoe, which for me at least, is a big problem.

Also, there is a lot of optical distortion at the highest macro settings. Not a problem if you don't plan on getting too close (its telephoto macro setting looked good).

I owned a digital P&S for a couple of years before I bought my DSLR. The one thing I found REALLY frustrating when taking herp shots was the inability to manually focus. I took a lot of pictures where the camera decided to focus on something other than what I was interested in. At night, it was really terrible at focusing!

Here's are a couple of examples of where it failed me

Here it was dark and the camera just wouldn't focus on the Western Chorus frog, no matter how much I tried to manipulate the angle, distance etc. I could see that it wasn't in focus but I had no ability to manually correct it! It was very frustrating -

In this case I wanted the frog off center. However, the camera insisted on focusing on the branch and I couldn't stop it from doing it. Again, I cursed my camera for not having manual focus at that moment!

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Chris Harrison
Central Texas

...I'd LIKE a better camera but I just can't lug so much stuff out in the field w me and so I'm not sure how to combat that problem...

I've ruined quite a few digicams over the years w dirt and grit and such. How do you manage to take all your stuff and still get some snakehunting done?

Thanks again for all your input, tis' greatly appreciated.

Chris

I'd LIKE a better camera but I just can't lug so much stuff out in the field w me and so I'm not sure how to combat that problem...

There are other good options in the point and shoot category. The one you are looking at is fine. You should just make sure you are aware of its particular limitations, just like with any camera.

I've ruined quite a few digicams over the years w dirt and grit and such. How do you manage to take all your stuff and still get some snakehunting done?

There are good camera bag/fannypack/backpacks available. I keep my camera safely stowed when not actually shooting pics.

Sometimes, if I am feeling lazy, I leave the camera in the in the car and just bring any photo worthy critters back to the car, photograph them and then take them back to where I found them. However, I usually prefer to just lug the camera (and the tripod) into the field. I am there to take herp pictures - why not carry the camera?
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

'ppreciate all the good advice.

Imma sacrifice some camera for portability, I think.

Your pictures are great, BTW...glad you answered this one for me

Thanks again,

Chris