Best Camera for Bird and wildlife photography? What matters most when selecting a Lens and camera?

before we jump too deep into this i want to get one thing out of the way if budget's not an issue for you go buy the most expensive mirrorless camera that you can afford and buy a 600 millimeter lens or a 400 millimeter 2.8 and book yourself a trip to alaska or costa rica you're going to be happy it's that simple but a budget is an issue for you like me and most of the folks that i know and you have to make financial decisions and you want to know where you can compromise stick around this is going to be the video for you guys [Music] [Music] hey friends welcome back don't adjust your screen it's me i'm not off on an adventure with some voice over and you looking at me as i'm laying down on the ground uh it's been a slow week for bird photography i've been out just about every day trying to photograph birds and it's been tough you know plenty of geese out there i'm not sure how excited you guys get about geese and definitely an abundance of seagulls when things are slow my mind starts to wonder and being on youtube of course my mind wanders to ideas and subjects that i'd love to cover on this channel but i'm just not quite sure how to do it most recently something that's been running through my head is you know a little guidance to new bird and wildlife photographers on camera selection and lens selection really what it comes down to is what advice would i have liked to have had when i was making my first purchase for a wildlife photography setup so sit back grab a cup of coffee this one's going to be a little bit longer than usual we're going to cover some great material we're going to start at the beginning of my photography career starting with an entry level dslr that i bought from best buy all the way to my most current equipment which is the mirrorless nikon with the 600 millimeter f4 i'm going to tell you about the pros and cons of all of them at the end at the very end i'm going to give my recommendation as to what i would buy today if i was starting over and and i was limited on a budget [Music] guys before we go diving too deep into this i want to make one thing abundantly clear youtube um just because i have a youtube channel it doesn't make me an authority on anything as a matter of fact i am very uh particular about assigning authority to myself on just about any subject unless it's my career which i've been at for about 20 plus years i'm not a professional photographer what i am and what i'd like you to consider me is a friend that's just simply offering some advice imagine you've got a friend that's been doing photography for a while and you just like to pick his brain well that's me so as you're going through this and you're listening to some of my suggestions and some of the things that i've learned in the past and you have some questions put it in the comments let's start a conversation i'm here for you guys and not only that there's a lot of talented guys that comment on this video and throughout all of my videos and you'll be surprised how some of these uh more seasoned guy these veterans will be glad to reach out and help you along as well [Music] so [Music] let's start at the beginning i was a broke dad um you know two high school kids back in 2013 2014 time frame and spring migration was starting again and i wanted to start photographing birds we had been looking through binoculars since 2000 and heck 1999 had been avid birders and we just wanted to take it to the next step it was time to stop telling people what we saw and start showing people what we saw so i wanted to be able to tell the story now on a limited budget the first thing i had to do is decide what i could afford and it was definitely going to be under that one thousand dollar range so we went to best buy and we bought the nikon d3200 which came with a 55 to 300 kit lens so step number one and advice number one when buying cameras especially in wildlife photography at least get 300 millimeters 70 to 300 uh 55 to 300 or 300 millimeter prime it's very difficult to get close to wildlife subjects and it's been my experience that a 300 millimeter is about as low as you want to get especially if you're going to be photographing small birds i realized pretty quickly that the nikon d3200 wasn't exactly it wasn't the best camera for wildlife photography so i upgraded to the nikon d70 100 which was kind of the mid-level uh dslr a lot of professionals were using it the reviews on line were fantastic a 24 megapixel cmos crop sensor camera in other words my 300 millimeter was the equivalent of a 450 millimeter lens and then if you added a teleconverter say a 1.4 on it you now had over 500 millimeters worth of reach so let's start with that d7200 and the 70 to 300 lens i took some great pictures with this uh what it taught me is how to get close to animals how to get close to birds you're not exactly sneaking up on everything when you first start out i learned that i needed to use camouflage i learned that i needed to get as low as i possibly could i had to learn all the methods of calling in birds and more specifically i had to learn to compose a shot because if i'm not getting close to it i had to learn to include that scene as best i could the nikon d7200 was a fantastic camera it was wonderful there was nothing i could say about it that wasn't um just on point in every portion the problem is is i'm a consumer and as i'm taking pictures with this nikon d7200 i'm looking at other products that are coming out specifically full frame cameras like the d600 and at that time the nikon d800 [Music] when i decided to make the jump to full frame cameras the nikon d810 was the no brainer choice uh reviews on the nikon d810 were comparing it to medium format cameras uh the the image quality was fantastic but i noticed with the 70 to 300 zoom lens that i had it wasn't really blowing me away yeah the images were a little creamier the the resolution was better i could crop in tighter it wasn't until i started doing a little more research that i realized how important lenses play in making a beautiful image so i made the first big lens decision of my life and that was buying a 300 millimeter f4 a prime lens there was no uh zooming in and out anymore and f4 was a lot faster previously i'd been shooting with that f 5.6 at 300 i was picking up a full stop of light and i'm going to tell you guys that's when i started to see the difference as you're taking a look at a few of these images just notice the creamier background notice that the bokeh is just a it's a prettier look to it now full disclosure once again you show that to an average person uh compared to a 70 to 300 maybe they don't see it it became clear the only people that could tell the difference were other photographers which was good enough for me beautiful images with a nikon d810 gorgeous step up with the 300 millimeter f4 and my other big piece of advice is that if you're gonna make an initial investment right up front go with that good glass find yourself one of those 300 millimeter f4s or whatever prime piece of glass you can find that is in your budget that 300 millimeter f4 was a gateway drug uh it opened the door for me to look at other prime lenses the next purchase was a 300 millimeter 2.8 then i got a 400 millimeter 2.8 and i could see the difference i could see the difference but this leads me to what i consider the best advice on this entire video and that is this the difference didn't come so much in my image quality in that i was learning my craft a lot better i was editing a lot better and more importantly i was paying attention to my backgrounds i was paying attention to light and i was doing everything i could to really start composing my images better i figured that if i had the best equipment that money could buy at the time i better get off my uh my butt so to speak and learn how to do this [Music] now as everyone knows in the world of photography enough is never enough as the lens opened the gateway into more lenses and bigger lenses and faster lenses uh so did that resolution chasing uh those better sharper images so i bought the nikon d850 best camera i've ever owned i've made a video about it i'm gonna put a link up here for you to check it out that tells you why i switched from dslr to the mirrorless i can sum it up real quick it was for video dslrs are not the easiest things to operate for video and i do youtube videos now but the d850 is hands down the best camera i've ever shot with the resolution blew me away just the sharpness of the images the way it it processed the the highlights and the dark areas that high contrast it was flawless absolutely flawless except that i couldn't stand using it for video alongside that i bought the nikon 200 to 400 f4 which is an extremely good lens can't recommend that thing enough and then i made the big jump to a 600 millimeter f4 i couldn't afford a new 13 000 lens and look let me back up not once during that entire buying process did i buy a new camera except for the nikon d850 everything that i bought from the beginning when i upgraded to the d7200 was used and you can see some of those prices that have post now i have this nikon d850 and the only thing left to do was to upgrade to the fast glass and i got the nikon 600 millimeter f4 it was one of the first generations actually it was like the third generation this is about 20 years old it's the afs2 doesn't have vr but i knew i was going to be mounting it on a tripod and there was nothing left to do but to get better and that's where i find myself today [Music] guys let me bring this home today i'm shooting with a 20 year old 600 millimeter f4 i bought a nikon z62 used i didn't even buy the new one i got it for about seventeen hundred dollars my lens was under five thousand dollars total invested around seven thousand plus my video rig that i'm shooting on here um my question i have to ask myself now is how much better would my images be if i had a seven thousand dollar camera and i upgraded to a 14 000 lens my argument and i think it's pretty safe argument is it wouldn't be that much better maybe three to five percent here's what i do know here's what will improve your images watch your backgrounds get eye level with your subjects pay attention to the light study composition and above all get better at editing from the beginning to the end what i noticed above all is that my editing improved and i can even go back to some of the images i took with that nikon d7200 and that very inexpensive 70 to 300 lens and i can make him look pretty darn good through editing [Music] all right guys here's the equipment recommendation very simple if you can afford a prime lens that should be the way to go whether it's a 300 f 4 whether it's a 500 f 5.6 400 2 8 600 f4 prime glass just gives you better sharper images and the lower the aperture the faster the glass is the longer you can shoot into the evenings the more light it lets in uh the better bokeh it renders fast glass prime is the way to go if you can't get that prime glass and you want a little more flexibility there are two lenses on the market right now that just i absolutely love one of them is that sony 200 to 600 i think it's a f 6.3 at the high end so not as good with the light but incredibly sharp incredibly light lens uh you attach that to like the sony a7 s3 or any of those full-frame uh cool new sonys that are out you can't go wrong with that nikon offers that 200 to 500 5.6 extremely light very flexible that attached to a nikon d810 or a d850 or if you want to go with like the d600 610 fantastic combo my recommendation though is to stay away from those crop sensor cameras right off the bat you're going to want to full frame eventually just skip it go straight to the full frame cameras i appreciate you guys watching if you have any other questions leave them in the comments hit the like button hit the subscribe button and we'll see you next time thanks [Music] you

Channel: Bayou Josh

Views: 32,085

Keywords: bird photography, wildlife photography, best camera for wildlife photography, best camera for bird, best camera for bird photography, New camera, Nikon z9, Nikon D850, nikon d7200, Nikon D810, nikon z6 ii, camera reviews for beginners, camera review, best lens for wildlife photography, best lens for bird photography, nature photography, photography tips, bird photography equipment

Id: GB0TGnavnk4

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021