The secrets to choosing the right gear for wildlife photography

 In this episode, we break down the real secrets to choosing the right camera gear for wildlife photography. From camera bodies and autofocus to lenses, reach, and essential accessories, you’ll learn what actually matters in the field—and what doesn’t. 

Whether you’re a beginner or looking to upgrade, this episode will help you make smarter gear decisions based on your environment, subjects, and shooting style. Stop wasting money on hype and start building a setup that works. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay, well, welcome to this podcast. Now, for those of you on YouTube, you can actually see me, which is um not how I usually do things. And in this podcast, I'm going to talk about the secrets to choosing the right camera gear for wildlife photography. So I'm a big believer in not buying things unless there's a really good reason to do it. And the other important thing about this podcast is that what I'm going to talk about are probably not the things you're expecting. So please stay with me and we'll go through it and I'll refer to my notes here as we go. So the first thing, of course, is if you find this useful, to like and subscribe, give me a review wherever you're watching your podcast. And this podcast is aimed for you, whether you're just getting started, or if you are already getting into wildlife photography and maybe need to rethink your gear choices, maybe it's not quite delivering for you. So let's get into it. Um, before we get into the gear, I just want to talk about the elephant in the room, which, given we're talking about wildlife, um, I'm aware of the irony of that. Um, but a lot of people believe that buying a better camera automatically means that they'll start shooting better photographs. And the bad news is that's not true. So I do recommend you listen to my series on wildlife photography, on composition, uh, maybe consider a course. But all of those things are really important. So the camera is part of it, but it is ultimately a tool. Um, it's fine owning a hammer, but if you're not quite sure what you're supposed to do with it, it's not that useful. Okay, so what does better gear give you? Well, when it comes to wildlife, the key things are better reach, so you can get in and take maybe tighter shots because we can't always get that close to the animals that we're photographing. It could be faster performance, so that could be burst speeds when there is action going on, that kind of thing. We want to be able to capture what's happening, and knowing that we may not get it with the first shot, that often when things happen quickly, it's the second, third, fourth, or even fifth frame where things start to come together. So that's clue, I suppose. The burst speed is one of the things to think about. Um, better low light capability is also an important thing to think about, and this is where sensor size and pixel density are more important than the megapixels themselves. So, in other words, and I'll dive into this in um a different podcast, but the bigger the pixels physically are on the sensor, then the better they will perform in low light. So if you've got a cropped sensor with a very high megapixel count, they've all they've those pixels have got to go into a physical sensor. So the chances are they're going to be quite small. So it's really important to understand what the low light performance is. Conversely, if you go to a full frame with a similar pixel count, you've got the same number of pixels but on a physical, physically larger area. So each pick pixel physically uh will be bigger, and you'll likely find that you have much better low light performance. Um, and the chances are you get a better hit rate for the sake of a better phrase when you're in challenging conditions. In other words, you're more likely to get usable or pictures that you really like when you are in um challenging circumstances. Okay, so the point about wildlife photography is that there's not a lot you can control often. You can't control the subject, you can't control the light, you can't control the weather. Um, so you need to adapt, you need to be sufficiently practiced and knowledgeable about your gear to be able to adapt to those situations, and obviously, you then need gear that is equally capable of adapting when those things come around. So, I'm gonna start with the camera body. Now, this is an important thing to think about, obviously, because this is where you're recording what you're seeing, and the first thing to think about is autofocus performance. So, what do we know about wildlife? Well, animals will often move erratically, they'll often move quite quickly, and often that movement is likely to be towards you or away from you, probably more likely away from you. Um, if it's towards you, that may or may not be a good thing. So, either way, you are your system has to adapt to a subject that is not staying the same distance away from you. So, a lot of the newer systems use AI to give you special tracking mode. So, some of them will identify a face and just track that face, adjust the um autofocus to go with that face. You ideally want something that's fast and something that gives you continuous order focus. If the subject is moving towards or away from you, then continuous is really important. And you need good performance in low light. So, again, a lot of what we do with wildlife is we're shooting in let's say low light conditions, certainly not bright light. This might be an overcast, it might be that we're at golden hour or even at blue hour, where we're still trying to shoot. So that low light performance becomes quite critical when it comes to capturals. Now I had this experience recently when I was in Finland in um in Hydes, just photographing primarily bears, but also wolves. Wolverines were there, but at that point the conditions were too dark for me to get anything useful. So it does depend what kind of animals you're planning to shoot, but be aware that the overall performance are probably the key importance indicators that you need to uh focus on. So that's autofocus. Second thing is your burst speed, so in other words, the frames per second, and the reason for that is that often things will happen pretty quickly, or it may be you're photographing animals. I'm thinking here of dolphins when they're porpoising, so they're swimming, but they're coming out of the water quickly. Basically, a dolphin in that sort of situation is out of the water for less than a second, so it's impossible to focus on an individual animal, even autofocus is not going to get onto it that fast and give you a usable image. So, the kind of the technique to get around that is to set up what I call a focus box. So, in other words, you focus on a particular spot, you give yourself a depth of field where everything's sharp, use a fast shutter speed, maybe one two thousandth of a second, and then you fire, and you are shooting as many frames as you can for one, two, three seconds while whatever is going on. And I've also used this with Impala um that were running towards me slightly and jumping over air bush. So, and if you can get those, they're great because you've got the Impala in mid-air, but these things happen so fast that you can't man you can't set it up and shoot it as you would an animal, but still, so having a good frame rate, so ideally, something in the order of 10 to 30 frames per second is really important, and relating to that is making sure because I'm going to recommend that you shoot in raw and you shoot the biggest file size that your camera will support. So that means the camera is now trying to physically write multiple large files. So have the fastest and biggest card. So it would normally be an SD card in most cameras, but use the fastest one that the camera will support. Um, if it's a slightly older camera, um, you may have a software update that might allow you to go faster. I have um an EOS 5 DS, and that creates really big files, but when I'm trying to do very fast sequences, it kind of runs out of steam, it wheezes a little bit while it's writing these files. So I might get once, two seconds where it's shooting full frame rate, and then there's a pause while it finishes writing, and then it will do it again. So you get these um it'll shoot a few frames, pause, shoot a few frames, and go. My EOS 7, which is a cropped sensor, will run continuously, and that's because it's having to deal with smaller file sizes, and I think the cards are more or less the same right speed. Okay, so frame rate is really important when you're using bursts. Ideally, you'd have a silent mode, doesn't mean that you're not going to make any noise, but it'll reduce the noise that the camera's making, which is also important. The center performance is again another important thing, especially in low light. And as I've said, you're often working in early morning, late evening, uh, when you're in golden hour or blue hour, you might be in a hide where you know you're going to have a period where you will be able to shoot, and then beyond that, you're kind of lucky if you get something. But of course, the other situation you might find yourself in is where you're in an environment where there's a lot of bright areas and dark shadows. So, for example, in a forest, um, it might be very bright outside, uh, but where you are with the animals can be quite shaded, quite low, relatively low light. So, I've definitely had that situation in India where I was photographing tigers in forest, and also in Uganda when I went to photograph gorillas. And the the situation with gorillas is even more tricky because you're photographing an animal that in itself is quite dark, so that does tend to push the capabilities of the camera, it doesn't have a bright area that you want to use in the image that it can lock on to. You're having to go with um a dark animal. Okay, so as I say, because low light performance tends to come down to the physical size of each pixel, you may well find that full frame cameras give you a little better performance. The advantage of cropped sensors is that often they're small, they're a bit cheaper, they're a bit lighter, perhaps, a bit smaller, but they do give you extended reach because there's basically a multiplier. I think on Canon it's 1.4. So, and what I mean by that is because a crop sensor camera is effectively using a smaller section of the full potential 35mm sized sensor area, um, it's effectively zooming in. So, Canon, I think the factor is 1.4, and that means that if you're using a lens with a focal length of 100 millimeters, uh that would be the stated focal length of the lens, which is what you'd get on a full frame camera. On a cropped frame, you'd actually effectively get 140 mil. So you've got a built-in zoom factor essentially on a cropped frame. Um yeah, hopefully that makes sense to you. Um, again, in the in the full course that I do, all of that's explained in quite a lot of detail so you fully understand it. But I think the thing to think about is not so much the megapixels, because that's what a lot of people focus on. And honestly, it's probably the wrong spec to be looking at. You need probably 24 megs, something like that, for most things. Um, but for wildlife, really speed and autofocus matter more than having really high resolution. The only time high resolution is really useful is if you plan to really blow up the images uh down the track. So, obviously, in that situation, you want to make sure the original image is as big and as high resolution as possible. But of course, there are trade-offs. So um, yeah, that that's that's what I suggest. If if your budget stretches to it, think about going full frame if you are likely to be doing a lot of low light work. Okay, um now the real thing is your lens. So if you if it's one thing you're going to invest most of your money in, or the majority of your money, or a significant part, it would be the lens. And I like to liken this to probably not so much now, but audio systems. So if you uh using audio systems in the 90s, noughties, whenever it was, um, you'd have uh possibly a turntable, tape deck, tuner, amplifier, maybe even hooked into TV, so you could get sound from that system out of DVDs, videos, or whatever we were using back then. But the key thing was always the loudspeakers because that's the bit that directly impacts the quality of the sound that's hitting your ears. And after all, the most the the purpose of an audio system is to give you really good reproduction of music. And when it comes to photographs, we're doing the same thing, but visually, and as the image, the light from the image goes through the lens before it hits the camera. Yes, we want to have a good quality sensor and a good quality camera to make sure we can capture what's coming in, but we need to make sure that what's coming in is also as good as we can get. So on the lens, there are again really key things to consider. So the first one is focal length, because this is reach. So what I mean by that is how close can you get to the animal visually without physically getting close? Because a lot of times with wildlife, it's not possible to get physically close. Um, other times with wildlife it's not advisable to get physically close. So it does mean you've got to close that gap using your camera, using your lens. So I I would suggest that the minimum focal length you want to be working with in terms of maximum focal length, if you're looking at a zoom lens, would be 300 millimeters. So um you might be able to go, I'm not sure whether you go from maybe 70 to 300 or even 100 to 300. That will give you an obvious significant increase in range. You'll be able to bring that animal up much, much closer. Ideally, you want to be in the kind of the 100 to 400mm zoom area, that's where I intend to work. If you are photographing birds, think about going beyond that up to about 600 mil. But it does depend on how you're planning to use the lens. So, what I would say is that generally speaking, going using something like a 100 to 400mm lens gives you probably the longest um focal lens that you can use while you're hand holding the camera. And that can be very important if your subject is moving about a bit. So, for example, if I'm photographing humpback whales on a boat, um I don't always know where they are, and if something's coming up to breach, it might just appear. So I've got to pivot, I've got to get on there fast, and I've got to be I'll be shooting fast. If you are shooting photographing something where you can use a tripod, then that's where a 600mm is great. So you typically things like birds, you would shoot at 600, but it does come down to how able you are to just hold um a camera and lens combination of that size, hold it steady and see how you go. Okay, so the next thing is aperture. So this is the f-stop, and you know on a zoom lens, you'll see two f-stop numbers. One is the the widest possible, which tends to be at the shortest focal length, and then the other one is the um maximum f-stop, so the biggest aperture you can create, um, but that's at maximum zoom length, so they'll be different typically. And at the bottom line here is the smaller that number is, so whether it's f2 or f1.2 or whatever it might be, the faster the lens is, and that simply means that you can shoot at a faster shutter speed with a given aperture setting in a given ISO. Uh, because physically the lens is bigger, so you've and this is just pure simple physics. The lens is physically bigger, so more light can come through, which means that you've got more light to work with in the first place. Uh, zoom lenses are probably the worst lens for for that because they do trade off quite a lot. If you put a multiplier on your lens, that will generally drop you one or two stops. Which, frankly, if you're in the point I made earlier about wildlife, you could be in varying conditions, you really need as much latitude with the lens as possible. In other words, you need as many options and you want to have as wide an aperture available as you can get in order to work with the animals that you're photographing. So, if you're thinking Zoom versus Prime, prime will definitely give you better performance at any given focal length. However, is it practical to travel with a number of prime lenses, which you then have to change in the field? And also situations can change pretty rapidly. So, I would suggest that a zoom lens is the way to go, but simply get something in the focal length range that will give you up to about 400, and then the best aperture you can afford, and that's what it comes down to. But also look at the physical size of the lens because if you are having to physically walk to see the animals, so with the gorillas, I had to hike for three hours each way. Um, I did have a lot of gear in my backpack, which also had hip straps on it, so that's a big one. So, you do need to think about that as well because you're not just carrying your camera gear, you might be carrying uh wet weather clothing, you might be carrying water, you probably are carrying water, you might have snacks, other things. So, all of that has to be carried there and back. So, it's really important that um you allow for that. Okay, um image stabilization is another thing that is really important. Uh, so most lenses have it. I would recommend that you do get a lens with image stabilization that will help reduce movement. It won't, I mean, you have to hold the thing reasonably steady, but the more you can stack things in your favor, the better. Um, you would image stabilization comes into its own more when you're in low light situations. So, again, a lens with image stabilization, ideally a zoom lens with image stabilization, um I would recommend that for most situations. Um, you're gonna there are trade-offs all over the place here, so you and this is really what I'm talking about. So you do need to think about that when you're um choosing your camera and your lens. But that's my recommendation. So definitely um a long telephoto lens, and I like to have a wide angle zoom as well, so that allows when you shoot context. But if you're doing a one-off trip and you don't really want to invest a lens solely for that, then of course the other camera you usually have with you, or most people do, is a smartphone. So I often use my smartphone to do quick snap type shots to give me context. Um, I'll use panoramas, I'll use it to shoot movie. So I do make use of my smartphone, and smartphone cameras these days are actually pretty good. Just understand how yours works because if you've got multiple lenses, often the spec that is quoted is for the best lens and camera combinations. So, for example, the resolution of the image might differ depending on which one you've selected, so just look out for things like that. Okay, um, supporting gear is the final thing I want to talk about here. Um, so here we're talking about tripods and monopods, things like that. So I carry a lightweight tripod if I think I might I might use one. It's useful to have them. That's fine traveling. Um, more often I'll try and just brace myself or put the camera somewhere where it's pretty stable. And remember that if you are concerned about shifting the camera slightly when you press the shutter button. Button, you could use a cable release if you've got one, or just use the self timer. So normally, self timers give you the options of uh in Canon, most Canons are three and ten seconds. Ten seconds is designed for you to press the button and then run in and get in like do a selfie. And the three second is designed for when you need to be hands-off. So in your if you're in low light, you don't shift the camera when you press the button. That's what that timer is for. Um, yeah, memory cards, so I've already said fast memory cards and um you know, reasonable storage on it, enough for your trick, or at least for a day. I tend to dump tape my shots off the camera onto my laptop and then on to solid state drives when I'm away, and that would be every half day or every day. Um, yeah, I but don't rely on the SD card for permanent storage. I would definitely not recommend that. Uh, the reason being that as you start to fill it up, you can very easily get into situations. If I know somebody did this, this was even worse with an underwater camera. They were storing things on the SD card in the camera and then replacing the SD card when it was full. And of course, they went down with a card that was almost full, took a few pictures, filled it up, and then all sorts of stuff started happening that they couldn't record. So, do put a bit of thought into it. I would recommend getting um spending a bit of money on an SD card that is fast, and hopefully, your camera buffer is pretty good as well. But for the reasons that I stated earlier, that you want the um you want to avoid, if possible, the camera wheezing when it's when it's um taking a lot of photos. Okay, extra batteries worth thinking about. I generally I I I actually have extra camera, uh I use um uh a battery extender on the bottom of my camera, so that'll actually take two uh batteries. But um I use that not so much for the battery capacity, um, but I do use it because I just like the way the camera handles with the big lens with that that on there. Um, but it might be worth having a spare battery, particularly if you're going somewhere where you might not be able to recharge the batteries very often. So, for example, when I climbed Killy Manjaro, I had a couple of extra batteries and I kept them close to my body so that they stayed reasonably warm because it was cold out there, and obviously, in cold conditions, your battery won't perform as well. Um, okay, so camera bags. Um the thing I would say, uh, and I've already said it in fact, is you you need to think about not only the bag you'll need for a particular trip, and I you know I do recommend backpacks, uh, but what else you're going to be carrying in them, which could be quite a lot. So, this is why I always recommend people get um a backpack with hip straps. So that means that the weight, most of the weight, goes onto your hips and not onto your back and your shoulders, and that makes such a difference in how long you can carry it, how comfortable you are. The other thing that's useful is having a rain cover. So often um there'll be a zip compartment in the bottom of the bag, and if you're unzipped that a waterproof cover will come out, come out, and you can pull that over the top of the bag. So if you're going somewhere where it might rain, or even if there's a huge amount of dust, um, it's worth having something like that. Okay, um, so I just want to talk very briefly about matching your gear to your environment. So having the right gear with you does depend a lot on where you're shooting. So if you're in forests and jungles, in other words, you may well be in low-light situations for much of the time. Um, you probably have shorter sight lines, and you know, things are gonna happen pretty fast potentially. So it's good to have certainly a 100-400mm zoom is worthwhile. When I was photographing gorillas, I ended up using a wide angle zoom for most of my shots simply because that particular lens was just a little bit faster than my 100-400, which I lugged for miles and didn't well got one or two shots off. But it was also too slow a lens in that environment. So having something that's a little bit faster, if that's the environment you're in, can really pay dividends. Um, if you're in savannah and open landscape, then you're probably looking at a lot of light, but the animals light must be a long distance away. So, again, a telephoto is good. The other thing I recommend for that is a splash cover. So I have a splash cover that covers a 400mm on my camera body. And although it's intended primarily for wet environments where the camera might get sprayed, I've found it's brilliant for keeping dust out because I have had an issue with um losing connection with my lens, camera body lost connection because fine dust had worked its way into that joint between the lens and the camera body. So using that spray cover just keeps everything clean, and I've never had an issue. And I've been lost deserts and things in that with that on. Um, if you're doing birds, you you're gonna have to have a trade-off because if you want to get in close, you do want a long focal length, five to six hundred mil is ideal. But you need to look at how you're gonna mount that, how you photographing birds standing still or walking about is fine, but the best shots when they're flying and maybe when they're taking off. So you really need to think about how you're gonna achieve that. So I would definitely suggest that a tripod is what you would need to have in your bag somewhere, possibly a monopod if you find that easier for quick reaction. But it's really down to you to think about how you're gonna use that. Um, you're gonna need your fast autofocus, and I would recommend say you need to understand your autofocus as well, and how you select points or zones that you're gonna use for focus. You may also want to think about back button focus as a technique in that situation, which is worth looking into. And then, if you're in harsher environments, this might be extremes of cold or heat or water. Um you certainly want to make sure you've got the right clothing on for comfort, but um you also need to make sure that the gear is weather sealed and protected. Something like the spray cover I mentioned can make a difference if you don't want to invest in a lot of um extra gear or um covers, so things like these underwater covers you can get, but they cost quite a lot. Uh, and the other thing is just be aware that you may get through your batteries faster, so that might be an occasion to have a spare battery with you. Right, so um, I said earlier that I don't like to spend a lot of money unnecessarily, so that's why I've tried to give you some tips on basic things. Um, if you're doing photography from a four-wheel drive, often they will keep the engine running like the serious ones, depending on what the animal is. But if it's a larger animal that can get cranky, they'll probably keep the engine running just so they can get out quickly. Uh, if you are resting your lens on the edge of the vehicle, you really want some sort of a pad there. And I recommend you just take a jacket and roll it up and stick it there, have it hanging in more inside the car in case it slips. You don't want it outside. Um, the reason for that is simply that if you're resting the lens on the side of the vehicle, the vibration from the engine can transmit through and into the lens, and it may or may not impact your image. You might get some movement in there, it depends on your shutter speed, things like that. Uh, the other thing is if you're in a four-wheel drive vehicle, typical tourist one, people are moving about all the time as well, they won't sit still, so you just got to deal with it. Um, so think about the things that I've spoken about. Lens definitely is important, camera body is important too, but I would also balance those two things with what other photography are you going to do? So, if for example you're planning to do a lot of sports photography, then that lens and body combination is probably just what you want anyway, slightly different reasons, but um, but that'll be a kit that you will use regularly anyway. If you don't do that kind of photography, you might want to get into it or you might want to move into other areas, but do just think about getting the maximum value from whatever you buy, and then that is something that I think is important. Because with photography, there's no joke about um a photographer dying, and his his last note to a friend was to tell his friend not to let his wife sell his camera gear for what she thinks he paid for it. Um, so in other words, we can spend a lot of money on camera gear. So, first thing, so I guess my buying tips don't buy too much too soon. Have a good think about what you want. If you've already got some gear, um, is it likely to deliver for you? If it isn't, just get very clear on what's missing because that will drive the specification of the replacement body or replacement lens, whatever you need. Do remember to think about weight and portability because um look, you may only ever take wildlife photographs from a vehicle, but even if you're on a safari, one of these things with lots you know, it's mostly vehicles, you're gonna want to take shots while you're walking around wherever you stay, those kind of things. So do remember about do think about the weight, and remember that if you're filling your camera backpack, your bag, you've probably got at least a litre of water in there as well, which is a kilo. Um, you've got other things in there, so the camera weight is important. Um do be realistic about the specs, okay? So it's very easy to get caught up in specmanship, we used to call it, um, and get seduced by all the big numbers. But the the important question is, do you really need them? So if you're only ever to plan if you're only ever planning to use your images on social media or maybe on a photo book, you can get away with much lower resolution images than if you are planning to blow them right up and stick them on a wall. So have a think about how you want to use these images as well. And that is an important consideration because it means honestly, these days, most sort of mid, so say the 24 meg area is probably enough for most people. Um, but you might decide you want more for how you're planning to use your images. Okay, so um the very last thing before I finish is just to remind you to practice because this is really important, and um it's all very well having all of this stuff and understanding all of these things, but if you don't practice and it doesn't become second nature to be able to select what you need, uh use your autofocus system well, use um bursts when you need them, and all this sort of thing, then it's all a bit pointless. So do find subjects to photograph. Um, I have um so the last four podcasts, in fact, have been a short series on wildlife photography, and prior to that, there was a short four-episode series on composition. I have a workshop coming up in um uh a month or so as this is going out, and that's about wildlife photography. It's a mini course, so quite low cost, but it goes into the main things. So um there's more information about that on the website, or drop me a line. So keep it real, um, have fun and uh make sure you're properly equipped, and then you you can have an amazing um time. So I hope you've enjoyed this format. Please give me a like, follow, subscribe, buy me a coffee, anything like that. And I'll speak to you in the next podcast episode. Bye for now.