Can ya see it?

[GaryBeaner]

Hi all!
I'm in need of some help (a tutorial) with my camera. It's a Fujifilm finepix s1000fd, now discontinued I think. Nowhere in the manual does it mention using macro, and I really don't have the foggiest. Every time I take a beautiful picture of a wonderful wildflower all I get is some expressionist art smudge thing. It's got macro and super macro but no instructions.
Any help would be fantastic.
Cheers.
T^

[Adam Savage]

What light conditions are you using it under? are you using the flash? are you standing a little further back and zooming, or no zoom and up close?

[Adam Savage]

Oh and page 63 on the manual only offers a small amount of info on macro with that model.

[GaryBeaner]

Daylight conditions, bright sunlight recently, no flash, crouching as if you were undoing your laces, and I've tried both with the zoom. The manual's not the best shall we say. I found a bit online that said come out of auto, go to manual, set the speed to 1/125, no flash and only use macro not super. I'm trying to use it for some wildflower homework at college and not having much luck. Any clues there?

[Adam Savage]

Bright light should help, flash might have to be used on top, for fill. Shutter speed is the killer I think. In auto the camera decides this by looking at the light hitting the sensor. If you can change the ISO try bumping that up a little, this normally lets the camera choose a faster shutter speed. If it's still blurry, it's the focus. I notice the manual says auto focus can fail in macro mode, super macro won't let you use the flash. It might be worth using manual focus to see if that helps. Sadly the ex has this camera, and I'm not exactly able to gain access to it LOL

[jbrown14]

Hey Gary, I'm almost positive that's the same camera I have. On the back panel of the camera next to the LCD display, there should be a navigational control that looks vaguely like a joystick directional controller (up, down, left, right) with a little "MENu/OK" button in the center. If you look closely at that control, you'll see the left arrow labelled with the little flower icon. If the camera is in Auto mode, top selector knob, and you push that arrow to the left once, you'll be in regular macro mode and on the display it tells you the range if I remember right. Press it again, and you'll be in super macro mode. You're best off using a small tripod and using the timer set to 2 seconds for the best shots, but even handheld, I've gotten great shots of ants on peonies in the garden.

I will double check all of this info later if I remember, but I have a horrible memory, so I thought I'd chime in while I saw your post.

All the best!

Josh

[jus_young]

Hey Gary, I'm almost positive that's the same camera I have. On the back panel of the camera next to the LCD display, there should be a navigational control that looks vaguely like a joystick directional controller (up, down, left, right) with a little "MENu/OK" button in the center. If you look closely at that control, you'll see the left arrow labelled with the little flower icon. If the camera is in Auto mode, top selector knob, and you push that arrow to the left once, you'll be in regular macro mode and on the display it tells you the range if I remember right. Press it again, and you'll be in super macro mode. You're best off using a small tripod and using the timer set to 2 seconds for the best shots, but even handheld, I've gotten great shots of ants on peonies in the garden.

I will double check all of this info later if I remember, but I have a horrible memory, so I thought I'd chime in while I saw your post.

All the best!

Josh

Thats the one. I had the same camera a while back and this definately jogs the old memory.

[jbrown14]

Yo, just to let you know, I did check my camera last night. It is the S1000fd, and the functions are as I described. I started to reply last night, but I was taking a break from working on my car and my brain wasn't working very well...oh well.

Good luck!

Josh

[Adam Savage]

Any progress with the snaps?

Adam