It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
Don't be fooled by the various cheap(ish) "600mm" zooms on the market. They are difficult to handle and optically inferior to a 100-400 II, and not really any better than a Mark 1 (which is cheaper, lighter and has much better handling.) Long lenses are optically among the most difficult things to design and build; for this reason cheap ones are best avoided. (You'll only end up having to replace them with something better.) Go for quality first up.
Connect whatever camera you fancy to it. A 7D II is pretty cheap these days and though old is very good indeed. Cameras are much less important than lenses.
For a general-purpose lens, on full frame something like a 24-105/4 is ideal, though sadly still quite expensive. On a crop body (e.g., 7D II) look around for a cheap(ish) designed-for-crop lens, accepting that you will have to throw it away if you switch to full frame one day. You'll probably find that something like the excellent Canon EF-S 15-85 is cheap enough these days to regard that as unimportant. (Don't confuse it with the earlier and significantly inferior 17-85.)
If your budget is tight, you can skimp on the general-purpose lens and still get good results. Long lenses (and ultra-wides) are difficult to make and cheap ones are poor things. General-purpose lenses (e.g., 18-55, 17-70, 24-105) are much less difficult and even a cheap one will go perfectly OK.
Summary:
Long lens: spend what it takes. This is the most important part of your kit. Choose the lens first, then get whatever camera fits on it.
General-purpose lens: better is better but skimp here if necessary.
Camera body: try not to skimp but do so if you really need to.
Unless you’re convinced that birding pictures are going to be the majority of your wife’s shots, then personally I wouldn’t even go down the DSLR rabbit hole. For general photography I’d get a decent quality compact. For a start you just can stick it in a pocket, so you’re not lugging tons of gear around (which can end up being a pain, so eventually you leave it all at home). Secondly a lot of them have all the zoom range you need; I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen a great shot only to realise I’ve got the wrong lens on the camera body. Have a look at something like a used Sony RX100, amazingly competent camera in a small package that gives very good quality results.
@Tannin, I don’t know if used Canon gear is cheaper where you are, but even a Mk1 100-400 isn’t “spare change” money and would set you back £400-500 ish here. A used Mk2 would be more like £1000 plus. Good lenses for sure, but not cheap.
The equivalent Nikon is even more (which has always been a mystery to me - it's not as if anyone thinks the Nikkor lens is better in any way, the two are very similar - you just always pay extra for Nikon lenses. That's one good reason to get a Canon SLR: more lenses to choose from, and cheaper too.
Often - well, almost always - with wildlife photography (especially with lenses which are a bit on the short side for birds) the subject is not nearly filling the frame and the final picture has to be cropped. The key to resolving nice detail is getting a good number of pixels on the subject. You can do this by getting closer to the bird (always the best method but hard!), using a longer lens (but good quality long lenses are bulky, heavy, and very expensive - cheap long lenses gain you nothing because what you get in reach you lose in blurriness), using a teleconverter (mostly doesn't work, but see below), or by having a camera with more pixels per square millimetre. Whether that camera happens to have a 1.5 or a 1.0 or a 2.0 crop factor is not relevant
Note that there is a practical limit to pixel density. Past a certain point, adding more pixels no longer improves picture quality. For any given lens and shutter speed and ISO combination, there is a practical upper limit. If a 5D IV (35,000px/mm2) is just barely able to sharply resolve a given scene with a given lens, a 90D (97,000 px/mm2) won't improve things. The same applies to teleconverters: if I am pushing the limits of the possible (under given lighting conditions) with a 600/4 and a 5DS (or a 7D II, which has the same pixel density only cropped) adding a teleconverter won't really improve things either.
There is no free lunch.
Would set you back about £14,000 though, probably £15,000 by the time you got a good tripod, spare batteries.
You can try save some money in getting the 300/2.8 and then crop using that 60mp sensor. But even this lens is £5,000.
I remember seeing a really beat-up Canon EF 300/2.8L mk1 for £500 last year. I was too late, by the time I decided to get it, it was gone.
Let’s say I’m bird “hunting” and I’ve got one lens (100-400) and two bodies. A full frame and a 1.6 crop frame sensor.
Is that not a correct understanding?
The 1D line is a low pixel camera, even the mk4 is only 16mp. The 5D4 is 33mp. Apply 1.3x crop to 33mp you get 25mp? Thereabouts. Meaning a 5D4 can “zoom” in even more.
The reason the 5D is more for portraits isn’t due to its pixel count primarily but its Auto focus system…which always lagged behind the 1D series. Canon always gimped the AF for lower models vs the 1D series.
In short, a 5D4 with a 400mm can “zoom” in more than a 1Dmk4.
The other reason why 1D focuses better is because on the EF mount, with OVF, due to the light fall off on the edge of the frame, the type of focusing system used in DSLR, it is harder for the focusing system to focus on the outer edge of the image. So mounting a FF EF lens on 1.3x and using only the center where it is the brightest means it can have more frame coverage. Which is also why the outer points on the 5D always sucked. This is no longer a problem with mirrorless where the focusing is does on the sensor.
1. Older dslr and lenses. Fast focus, accurate, bit more clunky. A Canon 7d is every bit as professional as the day it was released and would pair with a 24-105mm and 100-400mm.
2. Micro 4/3. Still underrated, but you could do a lot worse than a beautiful olympus om-d em1 mark ii or Panasonic g9 and the excellent plastic fantastic 40-150mm olympus lens to match for that budget. Add in a Panasonic 14mm prime or olympus 17mm and you're away.
I personally use an olympus epl-7 a lot. That's crazy cheap if you can find one, but you won't track birds or anything. Beautiful little thing for day to day photography. Photo below was epl-7 and the tiny 40-150mm f4-5.6 olympus lens.
Option 3 - bridge camera. I know little of these though.
The point is, there are a lot of very good cameras and lenses. I'd suggest finding a local shop that has some you can try and see what you're comfortable with. I love micro 4/3 as I have smaller hands and find the lenses adorable. I also love my old Sony. Plenty of people hate the menu system in the olympus em1 series. I don't blame them...
Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
Stockist of: Earvana & Graphtech nuts, Faber Tonepros & Gotoh hardware, Fatcat bridges. Highwood Saddles.
Pickups from BKP, Oil City & Monty's pickups.
Expert guitar repairs and upgrades - fretwork our speciality! www.felineguitars.com. Facebook too!