Don from WDO Photography explains why the Nikon D850 is ideal for bird photography on a budget. He prioritizes continuous shooting speed, high-ISO performance, and autofocus, recommends the affordable Sigma 150-600mm lens, and warns against cheap f/8 manual focus lenses. Buying used gear from the last 8-10 years keeps costs down without sacrificing performance.
Hey there, it's Don from WDO Photography, and I'm here with my trusty Nikon D850, my go-to bird photography camera. I thought it would make sense to create this video to talk about how I do bird photography with my Nikon D850. If you are familiar with my channel, then you probably know me as a wildlife photographer. If you pay close attention to my channel, you know that what I do is a lot of bird photography. One big reason for that is that I am a full-time commercial photographer, which takes up a ton of my time, and while wildlife photography is my passion and what I love to do, I'm left with not as much of it as I would like to be out here. Birds are really the most accessible type of wildlife to come out and photograph, with maybe the exception of squirrels, which are also fairly easy to come out and photograph, but maybe not as exciting. Ahh! Sorry, squirrels. First, I figure it makes a lot of sense to explain why I love the Nikon D850 and why it's my go-to camera. And a huge reason for that is really because I started as a Nikon photographer. And I've just always been a Nikon photographer, so I've stuck with it. It's expensive to change once you've established a system, so this is the system that I use. So let's talk about selecting a camera. You don't have to run out and buy the Nikon D850. As much as I love this camera, any interchangeable modern mirrorless or even a slightly older DSLR, any camera that has come out in the past 10 years— any DSLR or mirrorless camera that's come out in the past 10 years is probably going to be a good starting point when it comes to selecting a good bird photography camera. The biggest thing that you really want to think about when buying a camera for bird photography is the speed that you can shoot at, and part of that means buying a camera with a good high ISO. This is why I use the Nikon D850. Nikon is really known for having good high ISO performance, and the D850 is probably the best that they have ever done in terms of high ISO performance. The next most important thing to think about is autofocus, and there are certainly a lot of cameras that beat the D850 in terms of their autofocus performance, especially modern mirrorless cameras. that have things like eye detection for birds. Of course, the camera is only one piece of the puzzle. You also are then going to need a lens, and I'm a huge fan of the Sigma 150-600. It is affordable given its range, but let's talk about what you might want to look for in terms of a lens for starting as a bird photographer. And It's going to depend on if you get a crop sensor camera or a full-frame sensor camera, because a crop sensor camera, you can get away with something like a 300mm lens, whereas with a full-frame sensor, you're probably going to want to be at 400mm or above. Now, that doesn't mean if you have something like a 200mm lens that you can't do bird photography. It's just that you're going to need to be in something like a blind where the birds are going to feel comfortable getting close to you. On the topic of lenses, I just want to say there are a bunch of super cheap, very long lenses available on Amazon. They usually have a fixed aperture of f/8, and they are manually— manual focus. They're very inexpensive. I mean, like, $100 or less. I would avoid those lenses. They're not very good, and again, they're manual focus. If you're just starting out, manually focusing on birds is going to be tough. Now, if you're a longtime birder and you're used to focusing your binoculars, maybe it won't be so difficult for you, but I would still avoid buying one of those lenses. In terms of what gear to buy, or more so ways to save money when buying gear, I would look at buying used. Any camera that's been made in the past 8 to 10 years is going to have pretty good performance in terms of its high ISO and the autofocus capabilities of that camera. If you've got your camera, you've got your lens, the next step is to Go find the birds. So watch this video to find out how to do so with the Nikon D850.
