I’ve been thinking a lot about upgrading my current camera so I can get clearer photos and better appreciate the finer details of the birds I find. For the past few years, I’ve been using a Nikon Coolpix S6500 – a little point-and-shoot I got as a gift when I was younger.
It only has a 12x zoom, so I’ve definitely had my share of frustrations with missed shots, focus problems, and birds that were just too far away. More times than I can count, I’ve told myself I should upgrade when I’m able to.
But every now and then I remember what it felt like when I first started using it after relying only on my phone, when getting any bird photo at all felt impossible. The camera helped unlock birding in a whole new way. And sometimes the S6500 still surprises me – like with this recent photo of an Eastern Towhee. I think I’m sticking with the S6500 a little longer.
It made me curious: what was your first birding camera, and do you ever miss using it? Did it teach you anything, or surprise you more than expected?
My first camera was a Nikon D70 and a 70-300 lens. Since then, I’ve had many different cameras and lenses, but yes, I sometimes miss that camera. It had an ССD sensor, which was rare even back then, and after 2010, they’ve been completely gone. That sensor produced a distinctive image, similar to film, with great colors, and a unique 1/500 flash sync (which I needed for macro). But the camera only had 6 MP, which was sorely lacking for birds.
One of the first bird shots taken with this camera and a 70-300 lens:
My first “birding camera” was a Polaroid Supercolor 635CL back in the 1980s. Though to be fair, it was mostly used for whatever I found interesting at the time, and that wasn’t always birds.
Then I more or less forgot about photography for about two decades, until a family member came home from overseas with an Olympus Mju 300. That was my first real taste of digital photography. About a year after seeing what that could do, I bought an Olympus 750 Ultra Zoom and managed to take a small number of passable bird shots with that.
I don’t really miss the Polaroid, though there is something to be said for catching real light and having it stored on paper rather than as a digital file. The Olympus Mju 300 was the one that really surprised me. Before that, I knew nothing about digital photography, and when I first used it, I was amazed at how far the technology had come. More than anything, I think it taught me that I genuinely liked photography, it reignited something I’d long forgotten about.
I began bird photography (and nature photography in general) in the late 1980s with a Pentax K-1000 - a very basic, fully manual film single-lens reflex. I used a 400 mm Sigma lens for birds. It seemed wonderful at the time, but in retrospect I can’t believe I worked with manual focus and manual exposure controls! Also, film speeds much above ASA 400 were really grainy, so I was confined to relatively slow film speeds. The transition to digital, which I made in 2004, was incredibly liberating. So no, I don’t really miss that first camera. It was what I had at that time, I loved it at the time, and I used it pretty well. But a modern digital camera is a MUCH better tool for nature study.
My first birding camera was (it is still with me, but I don’t use it anymore) a Canon 600D with a 24-250mm lens. It belongs to my father, and he had bought it back when it was one of the advanced models. I was allowed to use it when I turned 12 and I used to think it to be a really difficult to operate gadget when I first tried photographing with it, but I still love it because it taught me basic settings like ISO, shutterspeed, etc. I guess it also taught me to be happy with what I got, because 250mm isn’t a great choice for the kind of birding I want to do. That is probably why I still get a shock when I have a look at my previous and current photographs, kept side-by-side.
As I compare it with my current camera, a nikon coolpix p1100, the change seems HUGE, and I kind of look down on my earlier photographs. I suppose that in a way I do miss it; the fact that I used to be happy with ‘record shots’ of a bird very, very far from me, and I had thought it to be a heavy camera until I got to have a look at the enormous lenses professional bird-photographers have.
My main objective behind bird photography is documentation and having fun while studying the subjects, and no commercial reasons and the 600D really helped me start this small journey.
This is a really nice topic, by the way! Brings in far too many memories and a tad bit of nostalgia… I think you have motivated me to try a bit of photography from the old camera again :)
I’ve had the same camera since I stated bird photography (Nikon z6ii) (I started 6ish months ago) what I don’t miss was my 24-70 zoom, I tried to do wildlife and birds on it, didn’t turn out great as you might imagine. I’m a lot happier with my 28-400 and 150-600!
I went from an iPhone 14 pro to a Fujifilm A5, which I ditched because I couldn’t get the geotagging to work (it used phone pairing and kept teleporting the geotag by a kilometer or so) to a…Nikon Z9, which hopefully will last me through med school and residency haha
I’ve never found this set up to be very useful or accurate. It’s cool that the Z9 is one of the only mirrorless bodies to have built-in GPS, but I went with the Z8 (for size and cost) and keeping a track with a GPS device when I’m out.
Maybe it’s due to how iOS sleeps apps? My friend got good geotagging with a Nikon DSLR and an android phone, and I noticed the fujifilm’s geotagging seemed to zonk out once I put my phone away in my pocket.