A mate of mine has just retired. Sensibly, he wants to keep busy and has thought of taking up wildlife photography (he lives on the southern coast of England.) He is a complete beginner at taking pictures.
What sort of camera would you recommend?
What sort of price?
P.S. I assume that any modern camera can download pics to a computer and e-mail them, correct?
The important part is the telephoto lens, to “get in close” to the wildlife that would otherwise run away. But a good SLR with a good telephoto lens can run into the thousands (but can also can run only into the multiple hundreds) and has a bit of a learning curve. He might want to “dip his toes in the water” with something like this before deciding if he wants to drop more serious cash on it.
Directly from the camera? That’s probably a really bad assumption.
Thanks for replying.
I take your points about telephoto lenses, experience and cost.
The reason I mentioned downloading is that I have a simple Canon Powershot SD750 and I use a connecting cable to download to my computer.
If that is what you mean, then yes, every modern camera should be able to connect to the computer via USB. I thought you meant send e-mails and uploads directly to the internet from the camera, wirelessly. Which some cameras can do, but which isn’t nearly a standard feature.
(BTW, to nitpick, downloading=receiving, uploading=sending. You upload to your computer.)
It’s often said that the lens is more important than the camera, but in this case there’s a caveat: a full-frame digital camera body will have a larger sensor which means a crop from an image will be sharper and clearer. This is especially important with animal photography where you might not be able to physically get as close as would be ideal. Say you find a bird perched in just the most beautiful pose, with perfect lighting, etc. But he’s too far away to get in close enough for a “portrait”. You don’t want to spook him. You have a telephoto that zooms out to 300mm, you compose a shot of the bird, but even with the telephoto, the bird only occupies around 1/4 of the total frame.
With a full-frame camera, you can get in Photoshop, crop that bird, and you’ll be amazed at how good it still looks. It can look almost as good as if you were standing right next to him. It might not be sharp enough to make a huge enlargement, but it could look great as an 8x10 print.
KEH has some great deals on Nikon D610s.
Since this guy has no experience with photography it’s going to be a bit of a steep learning curve. Also an expensive one. A simply way to start would be to get a compact ultrazoom like the Nikon Coolpix P900 with a 35mm equivalent zoom of 24-2000. It would be relatively inexpensive, compact, and wrong. It’ll be too slow, too blurry, and too frustrating.
To really get into wildlife photography (and you need more details into this for a real recommendation) you’ll want an SLR or at least a mirrorless system, with a big, sharp, fast zoom lens and full manual controls. While some are certainly better than others, any basic DSLR from Nikon, Cannon, or Pentax will work. Full frame is nice, but expensive, and will require more expensive glass.
Here’s a nice starting point guide from B&H - https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/how-to-shoot-birding-and-wildlife-photography/ci/32828/N/3611103778/sba
Since the OP is looking for recommendations, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
My usual suggestion here is a Canon Rebel body with the 55-250mm zoom lens. It’s not ideal, certainly, but will let your friend experiment with what kind of photography he’d like to move toward without a huge initial outlay. And this kind of entry-level DSLR is often easily found used in good condition.
The autofocus is very good in this system, and the aperture priority mode helps get good results with moving animals in a wide range of lighting conditions. Your friend should also practice stalking! The closer you can get to the wildlife, the better shots you’ll take.
I have a Canon Powershot SX60. With a 65x zoom you can really zoom in on faraway animals and birds and landscape features. See a turtle on a rock in a river? Zoom right in and see his eye color. You can even see the craters on the moon with a steady hand or a tripod. It is mostly a consumer-level point-and shoot and should be a good introduction for a beginner.
I second this. Prices on used DSLRs are pretty good, and you’ll get better equipment than a new P&S. Lens prices can get quite high but for a beginner a cheaper lens is just fine. What you get with more expensive lenses tends to be better optics, which starts to matter more when you are going to print and publish; a beginner won’t even be able to tell the difference. (You also pay more for faster lenses, i.e., smaller-number f-stops, but for outdoor wildlife shooting a beginner doesn’t need that.)
To nitpick, down and up refers to network hierarchy. You download data from a server to a PC and from a PC to a peripheral device, and upload in the opposite direction. If your PC is sending data to a camera, from the perspective of the PC it is downloading, not uploading.
I’d make sure the lens had a metal mount rather than plastic if it’s going to be used in the field.
…I’ll third it.
A cheap used one, same with the glass.
As long as he is in southern England, I would guess that wildlife would be a bit different from going safari shooting in Africa, replacing the gun with the camera. Basically you need to run really fast and not worry that you left a really expensive camera system behind, or if drops in a bog somewhere. Accidents happen and you have to get really down in the details when it comes to insuring the system.