Buy This Gear to Start Bird Photography (on Any Budget)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 พ.ค. 2024
- Bird photography is a rapidly growing hobby all around the world. If you've been considering starting, this video will take you through my recommendations for what to get (and what NOT to get) so that you can start taking pictures - no matter your budget!
My Website: www.alanyoung.photography
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#photography #birding #nikon #wildlifephotography #birdphotography #nature #naturephotography #birds #birdwatching
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IMHO a secondhand Nikon D750 and 200-500 f/5.6 is a hard combination to beat for anyone serious but not shooting professionally. Throw a nice rugged set of sticks and a gimbal head in and you've got a very impressive and capable setup for less than 2 grand
Agreed! I had the 200-500 and love the quality for the price. Good work out too because it’s heavy!
Switch the D750 for a D500 and I agree!
Also not a bad choice@@bavorosiers7953
Yeah but then you are left with an outdated mount with no new lens options and a lens system with ever increasing prices until it becomes irrelevant. Any Sony mirrorless apsc camera would be a far better option as they will be able to keep the lenses they got.
A hobbyist doesn't necessarily need or want the latest stuff (unless they just have tens of thousands to burn) Im not about to tell a hobbyist to drop 30-40 grand on kit for birding. We're not on assignment for natgeo here...
Realistically, the "new vs old" argument is more of a discussion for artists and really goes back to desired result. It's not like The Batman wasn't partially shot on 60+ year old Helios 44-2's rigged to an ARRI Alexa or anything.... We need to worry less about chasing technical perfection and "the new hotness" and focus more on the art. Ive seen way too many clinically sharp images that are just sterile looking, and Im even starting to jerry rig old glass on to new kit
Very nice video. I have however some things to add. First of all, you can make great bird photo's without needing a very long lens. In this video it is assumed that you are going to be in plane sight and you are approaching a wild shy bird. There are however zoo's and duck ponds where the birds are very used to come close to people. At duck ponds the birds might even eat out of your hand. Even if you want to photograph wild shy birds then there is no need to be in plane sight. You can use a hide out in some shape or form. But you can even get closer then that. If you set up a bird feeding station and you put a nice branche close by then the birds will often first land on that branche and then hop to the feeding station. If you have a remote controlled camera close to that branche then you can make perfect pictures by controlling your camera with your smartphone. It is up to you. Do you prefer to spend more then 10k on a lens or do you spend a few bucks on a ticket for the zoo or a bird feeding station. A few of my sharpest photo's of birds are taken with a macro lens.
I've been a lifelong birdwatcher and bird fan thanks to my birdwatcher mom. This week ive decided to start trying to learn to take good photos of them too!
Thank you so much for doing this content for us newbies. ❤
So happy that it was helpful!! I have another video on camera settings and techniques for finding birds that might also be helpful for you!
I find bridge cameras do great for casual walk in the park bird watching. No need to change lenses and zoom on those beasts are crazy. Nikon P1000 etc
Mate, this was a great video! Nice and simple, and I've learnt a lot. Thanks 👍
I enjoyed your video. I'v been a shutterbug for about 40 years. Spent many hours in the darkroom back in the day. Now days I shoot with Olympus (now OM Systems). I do a lot of "Backyard Bird" photos and videos. I'm lucky enough to have woods behind my house and get a good view from my upstairs studio room. Camera are cheap compared to the lenses I have bought over the years. The nice thing about the newer Olympus cameras is, you can halfway hold down the shutter button and the camera is buffering photos until you press the button all the way down. Not only do you get a number of photos after pressing the shutter button, it saves a number of photos before the button was fully pressed. As far as my background goes, I do a little bit of everything. Weddings, Landscapes, Birds, Stock photos ( one of my photos of dolphins swimming was used in a "Photoshop for Dummies" books). Here is a short Backyard Birds video I did. th-cam.com/video/5FxiX7eDoKM/w-d-xo.html Once again, thanks of the video.
This is a good video Alan. If people are discontent with their cameras and lenses, they can always upgrade. I like using the Nikon D750 with the Nikkor 200-500mm lens. I demand high quality bird pictures and the D750 puts me there. The camera is fast and I can do some extra ordinary fast focusing and tracking with the D750. I can see myself keeping it for the rest of my life. I had to chuckle when you said the Nikon P1000 was weird. LOL. Yes, it is a weird camera. But the 3000mm lens enabled me to get a Belted Kingfisher picture that I could take from a safe distance.
Great video! I can vouch for the Sony A7IV as a great all around fairly low budget option for a really incredible camera with a full frame, 33MP sensor, incredible autofocus, and lots of features for the price.
just stumbled on to your channel and im happy I did . your aprotch to the subject is so refereshing and that sounded so strange but its early and my cofee havent kicked in so i stick with it😁
Great video, and great style - thank you!
I would suggest getting superzoom bridge camera or buying used equipment starting out especially if you aren't sure if it is really going to be a passion for you. Used equipment can be resold for close to what you paid for it if you don't want to continue or want to upgrade. Once you see how you want to use your camera you can better decide which way to upgrade or if even necessary.
It's such an addictive hobby that will get WAY more expensive than you ever anticipated. Take it slow and don't impulse buy. Nothing wrong with rentals with some of the costs of birding equipment before you buy.
Beautiful explanation ❤❤
Very nice video and explanations!
You have prepared a great guide for the most difficult field of photography in my opinion. Thank you. I would like to share my own experience;
I started without knowing exactly what I wanted to shoot. I preferred Fuji, which produces relatively economical cameras. In time, I realized that I wanted to observe birds and take bird photos. For a long time, I continued this effort with Fuji's 18-55 mm lens 😊 which can be considered quite good for a kit lens. meanwhile, I used a lot of international and local resources such as collins, ebird, trakus to describe birds. While I have improved in recognizing bird species, learning about their behavior and how to approach them over the past two years, the most important improvement I have made has been my "determination to go out" to take pictures.
Finally, after 3 years, I bought a 70-300 mm lens to meet my range need for focal length. right after that, I expanded my equipment by acquiring a 1.4 teleconverter.
my camera (x-t3) may not be the best in auto focus, but it is more than enough for me for now. I don't plan to add or upgrade equipment for a long time because I see myself as a bird photography student who continues to learn every day to improve his technique. what I mean is that I have to evolve with the tools at hand to get the best results to my satisfaction.
I know it's a long post, sorry.
Thank you again and I want to write that you have gained a follower from far away ✌
Thank you so much for the kind words and for sharing your experience! Appreciate the post! I am also a fan of Fuji - their film simulations are unrivaled!
Great an informative show , learned a good bit about lens, I’m thinking about getting a camera an lens , I’m in the middle category, thanks again, keep the shows coming !!
Thanks for the tips. I'm still working on being comfortable with my new mirrorless m50. It doesn't take great stills, but love the videos. My husband takes the photos. Then we both have nice binoculars and an ok scope. It works since he like still photos and I like the videos of the birds in action. Thanks for making me think about goals first.
I purchased a canon 1500d equivalent to rebel t7 and sigma 150-500 mm second hand worked very nicely under usd 1000 and took some good photos with it for around 9 months then I purchased Sigma 150-600mm new contemporary which is also a great lens. So learning only matter.
I'd like to think I fit into the 3rd category, but still making do with budget lens options. Currently shooting a Canon R5 with the Tamron 150-600 and I get some decent results plenty of the time.
One other nice to have that I would mention in the app category is one called Seek. It's invaluable for helping to identify birds when you don't know what you captured. You can point it at the image on the back of the camera, or on the computer, and it will do it's best to identify it. Depending on the quality of the image and pose, it does a pretty good job. Works for other animals and plants too.
Great video. Your explanations were right on. One of the biggest misses people starting out experience, in my opinion, is not understanding behavior. Instead a lot of new bird photographers think the best way to get a good image is a high end camera and a 600mm lens. But with an understanding of behavior, habitat and a handful of luck you can even get good images with a 200mm lens on a full frame camera. In fact one of my favorite bird images from a trip to Madeira was with a 70-200 f4 shot at 200. But that said I just spent a week of bird photography and never touched my full frame camera opting for the crop sensor body with a 150-600 lens. Oh and one last thought, I found a pair of bino's a bit bulky since I almost always prefer to look through the camera lens. I did invest in a monocular, easily carry in a deep jacket pocket, which came with a phone clip attachment and does a not bad job at least giving good enough resolution to I'd a bird with the merlin app. Anyway take care, I look forward to more of your videos.
Thank you for the comment! This is solid advice - I REALLY like the monocular idea and I will considering one. I, too, prefer looking through my lens but a small, light monocular might help in those situations where my camera is packed up. Love it!
Currently I'd say I'm in the upper end of the middle range (2) with goal of lower high range (3). I use the D7500 and Z50 with Tamron 150-600 G2 and Nikkor 70-200 VRII with TCIII 1.4. Just have to know the limitations of these and get decent images.
Good information here for those starting out.
very well done
I am now using the Fujifilm XS-20 with a 70-230mm lens. It has good bird focus up to 30 frames a seconds. I even got photos of the hummingbirds with their tongues sticking out.
I started my TH-cam Creator journey to get a button plaque to make into a bird feeder😂
Not there yet I has high-functioning autism and do all my channel art and video editing on a app
Also I only film on a free Android😂 and made
A homemade bird feeder for my window
One day I plan to buy a old Canon GL2 and a tripod
I like to have my food and soda 😁 very helpful info btw
I started out with Nikon D3200 and AF-S Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED VR. I've since upgraded to Sony A6000 with same lens and just very recently to Sony A7 II with same lens again.
Nikon is really cool but the lens compatibility, especially with older cameras is funky. It comes down to the fact that there are AF-S, AF-D and AF-P lenses. AF-S works on all of the digital cameras as far as I'm aware, but my D3200 couldn't autofocus on AF-D due to it missing that important in body motor and it couldn't even manually focus on AF-P at all, as that's electronically controlled.
AF-S is what I recommend if one happens to go with Nikon if it's one of those older cameras.
I really love Nikon glass though and even though the lens I have is not the best, it's really good still. My problem is that I lose autofocus on Sony so shooting small birds or anything moving is a challenge, although one I can overcome.
i started with a Sony nex-7 and a minolta 100-300....realizing i needed a better lens and more speed, i moved to a used A7Riii and a 100-400 sigma....recently bought a sony 200-600 for the A7Riii ...the sony is great, i dont need more but I need something small for air travel
the best option for beginners is to buy inexpensive and light weight easy to use Point and shoot cameras , they have massive zoom decent photo video quality that's good enough for social media and personal use and documentation purposes. The few options are Nikon B700, Canon sx60, Nikon p900 etc
I shoot landscape - mainly rainforest and coastal - and have the gear for that... but there's a bit of downtime in the shooting, like when trudging from A to B. I started noticing these things fizzing about and thought 'Why not?'. It's been an enlightening few weeks - i have a modestly ok shot of a pair of Oystercatchers drag-racing at eye-level (last frame in the set before my high-speed panning had me auger into the beach face-first) - and about 107 frames of UAPs that i'm going to email to NASA. This gig's harder than it looks. Lkd&Subd.
Great video! One could here question what the definition of bird photography is. To me, at least the first section when shooting birds with a mobile phone camera, isn´t bird photography, it´s more of bird documentation.
I don´t really understand the value in images where you hardly see what bid it is, but I guess that´s my personal view. I think most people want pin sharp bird photos if they like and are interested in birding but for most people the gear is too expensive. It´s like wanting to play in a symphony orchestra but you only can pay for like a small tambourine.
As with many other sports and interests, they are for people who can pay for it, the rest sit at home watching TV or perhaps they can buy some yarn to knit. (I don´t own an expensive camera, I just see that photography is mostly for those having a large budget of at least $5000 or more).
I have it….is a good camera
D7200 with an 80-200 f/2.8 D, 300 f/4, 200-500 f/5.6 and a 1.4 teleconverter will cover most bird photography. Tripod and gimbal really helps.
With enough of the fundamentals down, you can get print worthy photos on a canon t7 rebel with a 75-300mm lens. Just don’t expect that to be good enough for all types of birds.
forgot the spare SD cards and battery, never know when an SD card gives up and a faster SD card will be nice to clear that buffer quicker.
7:57 . multiple successive/ consecutive. impossible to take "simultaneous" shots in a row. 10:15 d7000 has 39 af points (9 cross type) . 16:40 "dedicated" focal length LOL.
Yeap. During covid I bought a brand news camera and started bird photography.
Definitely need a 400 starting bird photography. Anything less you won't be satisfied
I call bullshit. I started wildlife with a Minolta 3000i. Very long time ago. I then got a 40D canon. 6 meg awesome. Then I got the best camera for birds. 7dmk2, and 70- 300L. 450mm effective range. Get a used 7dmk2 and 70- 300mm lens and you are good to go.
Buy used till you know you like photography.
It ok to talk what about showing the gear
Be warned, though, that equipment is rarely got on a need basis 😂😂
Alright, let's get real about the beginner photographers looking for a camera to start doing some birding:
There is TONS of options on the market (new or used) that can make your head spin if you try to list them all. So I'll just set up a number of things that you need to look after to make sure you don't make bad choices:
the first thing as a beginner is to really stay focused on APS-C cameras and not look right away for full frame options. Full Frame cameras are much more expensive and not only that, they have a wider field of view for the same focal length compared to APS-C sensors so you'll most likely need a longer lens to achieve the same thing, costing more money, which it really the thing we're trying to avoid
second is to have a camera that you can grow into the system with. Typically a camera that shares its lens mount with full frame options so that if you end up moving over to full frame if you take this more seriously, you'll not be forced to sell everything, chances being you could keep your lenses and even your old camera body as a backup too (exception made of camera system focusing on on sensor format like Fujifilm or Olympus/OM systems having pro bodies and lenses for those crop sensor cameras)
Now, I have some adjustments to make about the Nikon cameras reccomendations as I think they're not really accurate, or not really the best options that you can get in this kind of price range.
I have a Nikon D7000, and I have some shooting experience with it, and let me tell you it's far from the best Nikon option in that price range. Sensor is good, but the buffer if you decide to shoot RAW images is very shallow, with only 8 frames. Which if you shoot at the maximum 6 frames per second setting is only about 1.3 seconds of shooting which isn't much. Also, 6fps is decent, but I'd personally like more if possible., The autofocus has 3D tracking, but even at the time it was the sidegrade AF system from nikon, the 39 AF point system that kept drifting from the correct settings once you used the camera for too long (shared with the D600/D610 also).
I highly recommend getting a camera equipped with the much much better 51 AF point system that was first introduced in the D3. There is a LOT of cameras that have this AF system (including the D750 mentionned later in the video), but since we're limiting ourselves to APS-C here, there isn't many options to choose from: either the D300 or D300S.
Both of those cameras have a 12MP sensor that is still pretty good and not really far off the D7000's sensor. They also use faster CF cards (which can be adapted to SD if needed, D300S also have an additionnal SD port) and much deeper buffers (we're talking about 18 to 20 RAW files compared to the 8 files on the D7000, and of course much more in JPEG). The 51pt AF system is super reliable, and the 3D tracking works much better. If you buy the MB-D10 grip, and buy a EN-EL4 battery (about 40 bucks for the grip, 30 for the battery), you can push the D300 and D300S to 8 frames per second which is very good considering this camera can be had for like 150 bucks or so.
If you want more resolution, the D7100 has the same autofocus system, but uses a 24MP APS-C sensor. It has however, the same buffer problems as the D7000 and is also limited at 6fps. If you don't mind the 6fps, then D7200 is basically the same camera, with the buffer issue fixed.
About lenses, staying in Nikon (beacause that's what I know), leneses that are good to start with and will not break the bank are lenses like th AF-S 70-300mm IF ED VR, as it focuses decently fast, and with an APS-C camera have a maximum equivalent focal length of about 450mm. It's stabilized too which makes things easy. You can find much cheaper 70-300mm lenses, but they'll most likely not be stabilized which is definitely something you want to have at these focal length using a DSLR that has no sensor stabilization.
Another super good lens to start is the AF-D 80-400 IF ED VR which is a little bit older and still uses the screw drive AF system (all cameras I've recommended have the internal focus motor, so no problem). It's stabilized, has decent AF (depending on your camera, a D300 is not a problem here either, internal focus motor is decently powerful) and has a super usable range for wildlife, being a 120-600mm equivalent on APS-C cameras. Only downside compared to the 70-300 is that it's bigger and heavier. It has a tripod foot to help out handling it or use it with a tripod.
Both teh 70-300 and the 80-400 are pretty sharp for most uses, especially at the 12 to 24MP reslution
Interesting! I have not tried the D300 personally, but it does appear to be a pretty good option and KEH has one for $284 - I appreciate the detailed recommendation!
What if your goal is to make the best possible pics of birds you can? It’s not always about “needs” … it’s often about wants. Let’s not judge and get on with it. Don’t worry about why you do it, just do it. This video should be called “How to take pictures on a shoe string budget.” Not why I came here.
For me very clear. Sony A1 plus Sony 600mm 4.0 GM. And also TC1.4 and Sony 100-400mm 4.5 - 5.6. Prepared with this on everything.
Great video! I can vouch for the Sony A7IV as a great all around fairly low budget option for a really incredible camera with a full frame, 33MP sensor, incredible autofocus, and lots of features for the price.
I enjoyed your video. I'v been a shutterbug for about 40 years. Spent many hours in the darkroom back in the day. Now days I shoot with Olympus (now OM Systems). I do a lot of "Backyard Bird" photos and videos. I'm lucky enough to have woods behind my house and get a good view from my upstairs studio room. Camera are cheap compared to the lenses I have bought over the years. The nice thing about the newer Olympus cameras is, you can halfway hold down the shutter button and the camera is buffering photos until you press the button all the way down. Not only do you get a number of photos after pressing the shutter button, it saves a number of photos before the button was fully pressed. As far as my background goes, I do a little bit of everything. Weddings, Landscapes, Birds, Stock photos ( one of my photos of dolphins swimming was used in a "Photoshop for Dummies" books). Here is a short Backyard Birds video I did. th-cam.com/video/5FxiX7eDoKM/w-d-xo.html Once again, thanks of the video.
Thanks for watching and nice tips!
I'd like to think I fit into the 3rd category, but still making do with budget lens options. Currently shooting a Canon R5 with the Tamron 150-600 and I get some decent results plenty of the time.
One other nice to have that I would mention in the app category is one called Seek. It's invaluable for helping to identify birds when you don't know what you captured. You can point it at the image on the back of the camera, or on the computer, and it will do it's best to identify it. Depending on the quality of the image and pose, it does a pretty good job. Works for other animals and plants too.
I appreciate the recommendation for Seek! I will definitely check it out! I was just struggling to identify a moth and found myself missing the photo ID of Merlin for non-birds and this may just do the trick!
Great video! I can vouch for the Sony A7IV as a great all around fairly low budget option for a really incredible camera with a full frame, 33MP sensor, incredible autofocus, and lots of features for the price.
Great video! I can vouch for the Sony A7IV as a great all around fairly low budget option for a really incredible camera with a full frame, 33MP sensor, incredible autofocus, and lots of features for the price.