Wildlife and
Landscape.co.uk
Some recommendations
The guidance on this page is not intended for people who are already very experienced photographers, or those who are lucky enough not to have to worry about cost. Neither are there any camera or lens reviews here. There are many other websites which review equipment in great detail.
The simple fact is that any modern DSLR will allow you to take good wildlife photographs, and it isn't possible to buy a bad lens.
If you're buying your first camera, stick to Nikon or Canon. They dominate the market and their products are equally good. They have a range of lenses and flash equipment which will cover all possible uses.
When choosing a camera, don't put too much emphasis on the image size. Anything above 10 megapixels will be more than enough for prints to A4 or even A3 size. Instead, think about the following less obvious points:
Two expensive mistakes to avoid are "superzoom" lenses and cheaper 70-300mm lenses. Superzoom lenses, like the Canon and Nikon 18-200 and the Tamron 18-270, tend to cost more than the equivalent wide angle and medium telephoto lens without performing significantly better. They can be useful for holiday photos where you have a limited time in one location, but for serious photography on a budget, get the basic 18-55 and 55-200 lenses and use the money you save on a decent polariser or grad filter.
70-300 lenses are difficult to use without a good tripod. Hand-holding at 300mm f6.3 on a crop-sensor digital camera is hard in all but the brightest conditions.
A very good combination at a reasonable cost for wildlife photography is a 300mm f4 lens with a 1.4 teleconverter. This is light enough not to need an expensive heavy-duty tripod, and in good conditions you can hand-hold a 300mm lens at f4. They also tend to take standard size polarisers and other filters. I regularly use this combination in preference to a 500mm f4 when it's possible to get close enough.
Manfrotto tripods have for a long time been a first choice for photographers on a budget, while Gitzo carbon fibre tripods have dominated the market for serious and professional photographers.
Carbon fibre tripods really are worth the additional expense if you need to carry a lot of equipment for any distance. They are significantly lighter than the equivalent aluminium tripod, and offer excellent stability.
For anything less than a 500mm lens or above, I would recommend the Gitzo Explorer 2-series tripod. The offset centre column gives you additional flexibility, and it is stable enough for all conditions.
For very heavy lenses, you need the Gitzo systematic 3 series tripod and a gimbal head. Wimberley heads have long been recognised as the very best; Calumet now produce a head of comparable quality at about half the price.
Beanbags are a great alternative to a tripods under the right conditions. They are lighter and far quicker to use. They are ideal for hides, and for photographing smaller mammals such as rabbits and hedgehogs where you need to keep the camera low. The seal photos on this site were taken with a beanbag wrapped in a bin liner: this allowed me to move freely on the sands and to react quickly to the seals' behaviour.
For landscape photography, film still offers some advantages over digital. Film isn't necessarily better, but it still does things which digital photgraphy doesn't do.
Hasselblad, Bronica and Mamiya all make wonderful cameras and lenses. Personally I use a Mamiya 7 rangefinder camera with 43mm, 65mm and 150mm lenses.
Most of the saturated landscape images seen in publications in the last 20 years have been taken on Fuji Velvia film. Fuji Provia offers a more subtle and natural alternative.
Ilford make the best range of black and white film, including SFX, a film which mimics the look of infra-red film without its problems.