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▼▼  GENERAL NOTES  ▼▼

Familiar Friends

The most important aspect of getting photos like this is having friendly wildlife. You will need the ability to get close to your furry / feathered friends to be able to use lenses like these. I am also quite comfortable with camera settings and photographic principles, but apart from that the image quality is all down to the cameras and lenses mentioned here. You don't need big, heavy and expensive cameras to get nice photos. For all but the last camera I was using these setups for the first time to get the photos that you see here.

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Lens (Entrance Pupil)

Lenses are the most important element for image quality and "subject isolation" is the most important factor here, as long as they can resolve good detail and contrast. Then the shallow depth of field can really shine. This means choosing lenses with large "entrance pupils" (how big the aperture looks through the front element) and more corrective elements. Although this tends to make them big, heavy and expensive there are some reasonably priced lenses with auto focus and great image quality that are also relatively light weight.

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Auto Focus

All of the above lenses have auto focus and with decent speed too (all new and using modern STM motors IIRC). Although there are lot of interesting manual focus lenses around, I decided not to include any in these recommendations because their prices can vary wildly and the skill level required will be higher. That being the case you probably don't need me for camera recommendations anyway.

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Image Quality

Digital camera technology has come a long way since the first purpose built DSLR a quarter of a century ago. However, dynamic range, noise performance and resolution (image quality) hasn't improved much in the last decade. Viewfinders are not so useful for this kind of subject, due to low angle shooting, so choosing cameras without them could also save you a bunch of money and weight...​​​

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Weight vs Quality

Amazing equipment is one thing, but if it's so heavy you don't want to take it with you it's useless. Fortunately there are some smart choices that can reduce the weight of your camera gear. Engineering has done some mini miracles lately, but temper you expectations because physics will limit how far that can go.

 

Smaller sensor cameras often means smaller lenses, but those are often less capable when it comes to subject isolation (shallow depth of field). A 50mm f/1.4 APS-C lens will give the same look as a 75mm f/2.1 on full frame. The f-stop is telling you the size of the entrance pupil as a "fraction" of the focal length, both values need to be multiplied equally for depth of field. It might seem like you're not getting that penalty with exposure (the shutter speed will reflect that original f-stop value), but in reality the image quality will drop on the smaller sensor cameras due to higher ISO noise and lower dynamic range.

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Bokeh Panos

These fast lenses for wildlife are also great for bokeh panos, so I have a similar section over there. Only there you don't need the auto focus so much so there are more combinations with older lenses, but you will find most of these combinations over there too.

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No AI (Noise Reduction)

All images shown here are processed from RAW files, but do NOT feature any additional noise reduction. I originally processed them through DxO PureRAW (AI de-noising), but it felt like cheating (in most cases), so I reverted this and used the original files. I decided that it was far more meaningful to show a more faithful representation of each sensor's capabilities natively. Also the software cost would add €120 to the budgets and that seemed wrong too. There are many free options for general image editing.

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Value

I tried to find a good mix of cameras and lenses that represent good value for the images they're capable. Option 2 - The ZV-E10 + Sirui 75mm f/1.2 was a stand out winner to me for it's price, ease of use and results that you get.​​

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Brands

I stuck to Sony mirrorless cameras because that's what I have. In some case you could switch the brand to something else (Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Panasonic etc), but not all of the competition will be so cheap or lightweight.

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Full Frame

It used to be a lot more advantageous to spend more for a full frame camera. This was mostly if you wanted to the best shallow depth of field results (good subject isolation) from your lens. That advantage is still there, but the gap seems to be closing.

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DSLRs

I had included a DSLR for my lowest price tier here (€200) because mirrorless aren't in that price range. In the higher ranges I don't recommend getting a DSLR for a few reasons. You could get an old full frame DSLR and 85mm f/1.8 for around £400 if you look hard enough, but mirrorles cameras just offer more for this kind of photography. Having tilt screens so you can shoot at your subject's level is super important. DSLRs didn't have these screens until the last ten years or so. They're more expensive, but that's not the real problem. DLSRs can't use their primary focus sensors when you flip the mirror up to use live-view. They might look like a mirrorless camera in that mode, but they are just not responsive. ​​​​​

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Dynamic Range

See the below chart for the dynamic range vs ISO for each camera in this article (as tested by DxO Mark). This illustrates how most sensors over the last ten years or more have largely stagnated on image quality. Even resolution has not changed much in that time. Once the Sony A9 hits ISO 640 it pulls away on image quality, so if you're shooting in low light and/or you want higher shutter speeds that has a noticeable advantage and this is in silent shooting mode too, where it's already suffering a penalty here.

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