My equipment

With this post I want to list what exact equipment I use when photographing nature.

I have one main camera, the Nikon D500, and a secondary camera, the Nikon Z50. I use both for nearly all types of photography, except I usually do not use the Z50 for animal photography. Furthermore, I use my smartphone, currently a Fairphone 4, for casual photos or documenting landscapes if I do not have the Z50 with me. My equipment is getting old, so this is not a guide on what you should buy. There are more modern and likely better alternatives. Read my previous blog-post for a guide on equipment.

You can see what equipment and settings I used for each of my photos, both in my gallery and on social media. The following lists are a summary of my gear. Entries are sorted by (subjective) importance for nature photography.

Disclaimer: This is not advertisement, but a list of my current gear. I do not get any money for listing these items. Please refer to your favorite social media to see paid advertisement (except for the Fediverse, do not go there if you want ads).

Equipment list

What equipment do you really need for nature photography? It very much depends on what you want to photograph. Here are some personal suggestions that can get you started, but not everything is needed on this list. Actually, you could start photography only with one item on this list. Your smartphone. But I do not recommend that, if you really want to learn about photography.

I do not guarantee that any of the equipment will help you get better photos. A good photographer can get good photos with any equipment. You buy stuff because you read about it here? Good luck. Buy at your own risk. These tips are based my personal experiences and might not be correct and good for everyone.

Photography tips

In this post, I want to list some recommendations I can give for people starting with photography. This is from the perspective of an amateur photographer that focuses on nature and wildlife.

If you decide to follow any of my recommendations, you do so at your own risk. I warned you. You are on your own. No refunds. These tips are based my personal experiences and might not be correct and good for everyone.

Early days

Taking photos has been part of my life since school. The first camera I used was a 5 megapixel Minolta DiMAGE F300 that came with a tiny screen and a 32 MB SD card. The image quality was worse than most cheap smartphones today. But it was enough to document where I went and what I did.

In 2006, I got my own digital camera, a Panasonic DMC-FX8, also with a whopping 5 megapixels. It was the ultimate small point and shoot camera. It travelled with me nearly everywhere. In 2013, I upgraded to a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ41 with 20x optical zoom and up to 480 mm effective focal length (full frame equivalent). I really liked to be able to get close to things, even though they were far away. But I was not completely happy with the image quality. And holding the small camera steady was proving difficult at long focal lengths.

How do I blog?

If I were you (which I am glad I am not), I would ask:

How can you write such a blog without a proper content management system (CMS), no rich text user interface and no LLM that does everything for you?

Well, I don't know either. This is my second post. I don't have a good workflow yet. But I can share my current setup. It works^TM for now.