Decent camera advice

Matt_AH

Hi all,

Looking at picking up a decent camera for my wife's birthday. 

Been looking at the canon 2000d or canon R100.

Not really sure of the pros and cons of mirror less or dslr

It'll be a first nice camera and will be used for nature photography mostly. 

Ideally like to get a bundle, couple of lenses etc though I can pick up memory cards/bags etc from Amazon.

Can anyone give any advice? Happy to buy 2nd hand as more chance of a nice bundle, but time in tight.

I've gone down the camera rabbit hole this afternoon and am stumped!

Thanks in advance 

Matt

Devil#20

Oh dear. You've opened a whole can of worms on here with that post. Might help if you give an idea of your budget for both camera body and lenses and the proportion you want to spend on each. A dslr will weigh more than mirrorless but your choice of s/h lenses is enormous. Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony are probably the brands you should stick with. Compact or full frame. If you go for compact then buy full frame lenses to future proof for when you upgrade the camera body. A good lens is a good lens and you keep hold of them and change the camera. 

Matt_AH

Devil#20 said:

Oh dear. You've opened a whole can of worms on here with that post. Might help if you give an idea of your budget for both camera body and lenses and the proportion you want to spend on each. A dslr will weigh more than mirrorless but your choice of s/h lenses is enormous. Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony are probably the brands you should stick with. 

Sorry, mentioned the 2 I was looking at but not the price range. Ideally up to £500 (2nd hand) in total. Appreciate it's at the lower end of the market but sadly, my record deal never came to fruition. 

Understand that figure would need to increase if new and would limit to a body and one lense situation. 

Devil#20

Matt_AH said:

Devil#20 said:

Oh dear. You've opened a whole can of worms on here with that post. Might help if you give an idea of your budget for both camera body and lenses and the proportion you want to spend on each. A dslr will weigh more than mirrorless but your choice of s/h lenses is enormous. Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony are probably the brands you should stick with. 

Sorry, mentioned the 2 I was looking at but not the price range. Ideally up to £500 (2nd hand) in total. Appreciate it's at the lower end of the market but sadly, my record deal never came to fruition. 

Understand that figure would need to increase if new and would limit to a body and one lense situation. 

Right then. You're looking at a s/h dslr. I'm biased as I have a Nikon system. I'd be looking at a Nikon D7100 or D7200 and a 70-200mm f2.8 Nikon lens then for the wildlife stuff. Also buy a cheap short zoom for general use. 

Matt_AH

Devil#20 said:

Matt_AH said:

Devil#20 said:

Oh dear. You've opened a whole can of worms on here with that post. Might help if you give an idea of your budget for both camera body and lenses and the proportion you want to spend on each. A dslr will weigh more than mirrorless but your choice of s/h lenses is enormous. Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony are probably the brands you should stick with. 

Sorry, mentioned the 2 I was looking at but not the price range. Ideally up to £500 (2nd hand) in total. Appreciate it's at the lower end of the market but sadly, my record deal never came to fruition. 

Understand that figure would need to increase if new and would limit to a body and one lense situation. 

Right then. You're looking at a s/h dslr. I'm biased as I have a Nikon system. I'd be looking at a Nikon D7100 or D7200 and a 70-200mm f2.8 Nikon lens then for the wildlife stuff. Also buy a cheap short zoom for general use. 

Thanks, will take a look.

theatreanchor

I still think the Canon 5D mk II or up is fab. 

Stratavarious

Canon DSLR user here… if it’s for wildlife, the range of lenses and add ons swing it.

Canon 90D be in the list for me today but the 2000D looks good,  They have been excellent for years and I am used to their menus and operation.  Great for video at gigs too!   An older 60D be fine.

Nikon and other big brands all be good too,

Half decent body and the best lens you can get be the trick.  I went for the higher priced zooms. Big difference but a bit weighty.

I also value the Canons I have with moveable screen. Great for closeup work on small plants and animals or on tripods, 

dazzajl

Mirrorless is the future, so right now DSLR bodies are great value. Cameras from five years or so back are still great cameras and it doesn’t really matter which brand you go for. The bigger the brand, the more choice of third party lenses you’ll have but that’s the only real difference. 

The best bargains in terms of kits for sale on eBay or Facebook marketplace are often found in the micro four thirds or Canon worlds. 

If you see something that you like the look of, chuck it up here and folks will give you the lowdown. 

Offset

Calling @RaymondLin :-)

RaymondLin

To be brutally honest, £500 isn’t big enough budget for Nature photography.  By that I take it you mean Safari, birds and wild animals.  Not a lion in a zoo?

For this you will need a telephoto and there is no getting around that these are expensive in every system.   Even getting used, a single lens would take up most of not all your budget…so you will have to go used and old…

Canon EOS will probably be best bang for buck, but I am not sure on a 200D, I would be inclined to get a 7Dii with a 70-200/4.0.  That’s actually in budget amazingly enough.

Matt_AH

Thanks for the feedback. 

Less safari, more, look at those lovely birds in the park kinda thing. 

Is it worth getting the R100 given mirror less seems to be the future?

RaymondLin

Sure but the lens is not long enough for nature.  Family snaps perhaps and it’s very slow ( arrow aperture ) being 4.5-6.3. 

Devil#20

Offset said:

Calling @RaymondLin :-)

Beat me to it. 

Devil#20

Matt_AH said:

Thanks for the feedback. 

Less safari, more, look at those lovely birds in the park kinda thing. 

Is it worth getting the R100 given mirror less seems to be the future?

I concur with what @RaymondLin has said above but also bear in mind what @dazzajl says about mirrorless being the future. You're not in the mirrorless market on your budget but fear not. That means the s/h market is flooded with really really great dslr's for a fraction of their original price and they are almost giving them away. My recommendation for Nikon over Canon is a personal thing. I prefer the menus to Canon's because I'm used to them whereas a Canon person will be used to theirs, which is what it normally boils down to. You aren't encumbered by that decision yet. Sony are great but their menu system isn't as intuitive. Both Nikon and Canon are great systems and both comparable quality regarding build/optics etc and not much separates them. 

My recommendation of 70-200mm f2.8 will fit the bill for now, but like Raymond says it's not a serious wildlife lens but I think it will more than suit you for now. Wildlife photography is mega expensive to get into. Your budget wouldn't get you out of the starting blocks.

It's more than a good time to get into serious photography with some excellent s/h dslr gear though. I have a Nikon Z8 mirrorless but not sure what the obsession is with them. I'm still quite happy shooting that or my Nikon D750 full frame or D7200 which do great jobs and I have loads of lenses for. I keep a Nikon D90 in boot of the car with a Nikon 18-200 zoom on it for when I'm travelling around and see something photo-worthy. You sometimes get and evening when the light suddenly changes and everything just comes alive. You need your camera. 

Also don't forget, you need all the rest of the stuff. Wildlife, you'll need a good tripod and gimbal head. The heavier the tripod the cheaper it is and the better it is. That's the way it is. 

strtdv

I've an old Sony DSLR (Alpha a580), which I chose partly because it used the same sensor as the Nikon D7000 but was a fair bit cheaper.

Old Minolta lenses are compatible with Sony camera bodies too, which meant I was able to pick up some fairly decent lenses for peanuts (50mm f1.7 for under £40, and a 70-210mm f4 "beercan" lens for about the same). 

The 70-210 is fine for taking photos of garden birds but you'd need far more zoom (400mm+) for wildlife.

Devil#20

strtdv said:

The 70-210 is fine for taking photos of garden birds but you'd need far more zoom (400mm+) for wildlife.

Exactly. But you'll get some good photos in your garden or that distance with a 200 than you will with a short or mid focal lenth lens. Longer focal length lenses and wide apertures and a top level camera are needed for serious wildlife photography but that's almost, if not, an entirely separate hobby from photography in itself. I think @Matt_AH should stick to budget and find out how far he or his mrs want to take photography after dipping a toe in the water. It's not dissimilar to guitars when it comes to parting you from your money.  

RaymondLin

Birds and wild life are expensive hobbies.  You need big glass and they are all expensive. I’m very glad I have no interest in this area as it saves me a ton of money lol.

Devil#20

RaymondLin said:

Birds and wild life are expensive hobbies.  You need big glass and they are all expensive. I’m very glad I have no interest in this area as it saves me a ton of money lol.

Me too. I always wanted to join one of these extreme bird spotting clubs. They pay for a paging system where they will go from one end of the country to see a rare visiting bird to the UK. I'd love to turn up first and be frying it up in a pan when the rest arrive and claim to have eaten (as well as seen) more birds than anyone else in the club. The best would be when they're all lining up their cameras and tripods wating to see it and when it pops it's head up the barrels of my 12 bore appear over the top and shoot it before their very eyes and my gun dog goes off to collect it for the pan already heating up on the Go Outdoors £20 camping gas cooking ring. 

Tannin

theatreanchor said:

I still think the Canon 5D mk II or up is fab. 

The 5D II is a spectacularly good camera, still a star even by today's standards .... except for the stone-age autofocus system. The AF is perfectly accurate, but clunky and inflexible and a pain to use. Hopeless for action work. All that said, I still have a 5D II and although I seldom use it now because I also have 5D IV, 5DS, 5DS R, 1D IV and 7D, whenever I do get the old stager out I am still blown away by the beautiful picture quality it delivers. 15 years old now, and still well worth owning.

Matt_AH

Devil#20 said:

RaymondLin said:

Birds and wild life are expensive hobbies.  You need big glass and they are all expensive. I’m very glad I have no interest in this area as it saves me a ton of money lol.

Me too. I always wanted to join one of these extreme bird spotting clubs. They pay for a paging system where they will go from one end of the country to see a rare visiting bird to the UK. I'd love to turn up first and be frying it up in a pan when the rest arrive and claim to have eaten (as well as seen) more birds than anyone else in the club. The best would be when they're all lining up their cameras and tripods wating to see it and when it pops it's head up the barrels of my 12 bore appear over the top and shoot it before their very eyes and my gun dog goes off to collect it for the pan already heating up on the Go Outdoors £20 camping gas cooking ring. 

Interesting how a simple question can reveal stuff like this.

Neilybob

I can highly recommend buying through MPB photography as I have bought and sold through them. 

https://www.mpb.com