Advice on My First Camera for Wildlife
When I first came to buy a camera after starting my first full-time job, I got advice from a friend with whom I shared a house. I will always remember him saying to me that the first time I came to photograph a bird I would end up with a picture that looked like a lump of coal on the lawn. And lo and behold all my first prints of wildlife were useless wasting the processing and printing cost – yes it was a long time ago.
What he was saying was that you really need to fill the frame with the wildlife subject. Which is a lesson I am still learning.
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I am fairly sure that most real beginners would expect the answer to “What kind of camera do I need for wildlife photography” to be “one with a big telephoto lens” like these guys waiting for a bear.
But there is much more to it than that and the simplest answer is “it depends”. It is also well to remember that you can also move closer or post-process to fill the frame.
That’s a discouraging answer but all the same true – of course it depends on what you want to shoot.
What Wildlife Might You Want to shoot
Wildlife in the Landscape
The distant herd of elephants in that majestic landscape – then there is no need for a telephoto lens or high-speed focusing, a high burst rate, or much of anything.
High definition and sharp lenses are necessary but a fast lens is not, as the need for shooting in low light is not critical. A fast lens allowing you to blur the background is not necessary as the subject and background are at infinity.
Wildlife You Can’t Get Close To
Sometimes you are in a hide on a lake across which an elephant and her calf
are leaving after quenching their thirst and cooling down in the water a telephoto can be the difference between a poster printable shot and a postcard.
A Close-up of a Wild animal
The closeup of the elephant’s eyelashes, so long as you are capturing nature in the wild,
definitely requires a long telephoto. This in turn requires the ability to use fast shutter speeds to overcome camera shake and the fact that an elephant never stops moving although rather slowly.
For Very Small Insects at Work
If you are looking for that shot of a cutter ant attacking a leaf most lenses will not be able to focus close enough to allow you to fill enough of the shot which in turn necessitates heavy post-processing cropping. So a macro lens and maybe extension tubes are necessary.
Automating Wildlife Photography
Camera traps take photographs of animals that has tripped a sensor set up to trigger a camera installed by the photographer.
The camera position and settings are preset so the photographer is, of course, unable to select the exact position and orientation of the animal photographed. The camera used should, therefore, have a wide-angle lens and high resolution to allow significant cropping. It goes without saying that the success rate is going to be low but with a digital camera that is not a problem.
Birdfeeder cams that stream a view of your birdfeeder, waterhole cams that stream the game at waterholes, animal trail cams that watch for endangered species, and even the inverse where the animal carries the camera are all options for photographing wildlife.
The information collected by camera traps can be important to wildlife conservation. Recently, a Black-naped Pheasant-Pigeon photographed by a bird trap on Fergusson Island revealed that it was not extinct as had been suspected.
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What are The Types of Wildlife Photography?
What is the best aspect ratio for wildlife photography?
Your First Camera for Wildlife Photography
You probably won’t be sure enough to stick to one type of wildlife photography so the obvious solution is to buy a versatile camera. This will mean giving up some of those expensive things like ultra-long lenses, very fast prime lenses, complex focus tracking, high burst rates, and a prestigious name. This allows you to try all types of photography with some limitations which can probably be overcome with effort.
Besides the camera, you need a memory card of a size that matches whether your need to take bursts to capture that fast action or record the video of a days activity at a feeder or water hole. You also need to start studying animal behavior to allow you to anticipate
But at the end of the day, assuming you want to buy your first camera for wildlife, the most sensible conservative choice would be to buy a mirrorless camera with a long fast zoom which would allow you to try most of the possible types of wildlife photography. Even a bottom-of-the-line camera will give you high-quality photographs while you learn and improve your skills.
When you know what and how you want to photograph wildlife you will already have the knowledge to specify the camera you need and invest in the extras that will take quality to whatever level you need.