Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Anyone has experience using a Fuji S9000? I just purchased this camera, but haven't received it yet. Preliminary investigation left an impression that it would be good for herp photography as it has a 10.7x wide angle optical zoom and 9 megapixels. Camera also has both manual and digital zoom options. I also read some of the testimonials from people that have used it, and one in particular stated that the user photographed wildlife and was able to photograph the hairs on the legs of a stick insect. Good stuff....

I plan on takin' this thing around and photographing as many animals as I can find in the great herp state of Az...

Any tips or observations are appreciated!

-AzAtrox

Well, I have a s5200 which is similar but worse in alot of ways, and plan to buy a S9000 next fall. They are pretty great cameras for the money as you probably know by now. My S5200 only has auto focus, and while you probably won't be doing that much having manual, it is nice for photographing something you are holding in your other hand. So I would suggest you practice hitting stuff with the autofocus, its made a huge difference to me just to be more used to it. For instance learning to focus on some wide part of my hand and then trying to take a picture of a little lizard or insect is more often effective than just trying to get the camera to focus on the small animal.