Do You Need An Expensive Lens For Bird Photography

^{Note: This tip comes from Tobie Schalkwyk’s free eBook - Bird Photography: Most Popular Lenses}

Bird photographers are spoiled for choice - as far as lenses are concerned.

Ultimately, the choice is all a function of quality requirements, including ease of use (weight and size) and, most importantly, budget.

A few years ago, only the ‘professional’ (f/2.8 and f/4) brand name prime lenses were considered ‘good enough for wildlife photography, especially birds’ because, in those days, the cameras’ had difficulty handling higher ISO settings, which was a real Achilles heel when mounting slower less expensive lenses.

The problem was that the widest aperture of these lenses generally started around f/5 and smaller, so they were useless as soon as unfavorable lighting conditions struck.

Then came the latest range of cameras with stunning high ISO handling abilities: the Canon 5D IV, Nikon D850, and D5, and even a crop sensor beast, the Nikon D500, among others, were introduced.

These cameras opened a new world to the (prospective) owners of no-brand zoom lenses.

Their relatively ‘bad’ aperture ranges could be overridden by pushing up the ISO setting to much higher sensitivity levels than was feasible before, and one could do so without fear of negative results.

I believe that the ISO limitation will be conquered even more in the future. Who knows, maybe we will even see cameras in the years to come without ISO buttons or ISO settings because it will simply become irrelevant! We can only dream!

In the meantime, buy the best lenses you can afford and a camera with excellent high ISO sensitivity.

Want more? If you want to learn more about bird photography, and capture beautiful shots of your own, we recommend downloading and printing out Photzy’s 10 Bird Photography Cheat Sheets (Special bonus available now!)