Scotland Newbie desperately seeking advice (TIA)

DianneR

DianneR

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Dianne reap
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I have decided to properly get into photography, but mainly lanscape, wildlife, the sea and most importantly the night sky. I have spent the last few months frustrated with you tube posts etc.
I have a budget of £600 to get me started and what I researched so far is best entry level new would be the canon 2000d, I can get the body with 18-55 IS III lens and 70-300 IS III lens for £589. I feel happy with canon body as I previously messed about "auto snapping" with canon kiss X5 and familiar with some settings, (been practicing a bit with it, however sand from previous holiday got into it)
Any different suggestions on camera within that price range, ideally I would like to make images into canvases and large prints.
My struggle at moment is should I stick with canon lenses or is the tamron 70-300mm a better sharper image and zoom? The tamron appeals as it also has macro mode and the canon one doesn't seem to.
If anyone could help, even a little advice would be greatly appreciated. Desperate to get started. Thank you.
 
Welcome. For the night sky most important is to let in lots of light. The best way to do this is to leave the shutter open for a long time, which means you need a tripod. To start I would get a camera with its standard kit lens plus a tripod. Which camera depends on how you like the controls. The canon you suggest is not a bad place to start.
 
Welcome to the forum Dianne - I can only advise on the Wildlife bit of your intro as I mostly but not exclusively photograph wildlife, sometimes Weddings and sometimes Landscapes

Here: Les Moxon | Flickr

70-300mm would be of little use for wildlife in my opinion, I use a 600mm lens and struggle to get a full frame image, so need to crop the image, this will mean having a high mega pixel camera to facilitate this

I currently own a Sony a7Riv and Sony a7Riii 61mp & 42mp almost twice the 24mp body you mention = 70-300mm does say MACRO mode but they seldom produce a true 1:1 macro image - for that you would need a dedicated Macro lens like a 105mm or 90mm f2.8

Landscapes and Seascapes- I use a Sigma 24mm f1.4 ART lens - Macro I use a Sony 90mm f2.8 Macro lens - People I use a Sony 85mm f1,4 G lens

Your rather small budget, will see you struggle to get all of what you want - It may be wise to stick to one genre at this Point and build up your kit as your skills improve

Good luck which ever way to choose to go - we all had to start somewhere

Les :)
 
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Welcome to the forum Dianne, good luck with your endeavours :welcome:
 
I would suggest looking for a good used camera and lens, eg at Wex or MPB.com, to make best use of your budget and allow for getting a tripod and potentially second lens. I'm not a Canon user so can't recommend a particular model, but buying used may get you a better camera and lens combination to cater for your range of interests.
 
Thank you. Been on wex etc having a good look my brain is fried haha, does having a 18-270mm lens cause reduction in image quality or is it best to have the seperate lenses?
 
Hi Dianne, And welcome aboard TP, looking forward to hearing from you and maybe seeing some of your images on the various forums. "Enjoy".
 
What sort of night sky? Wide angle milkyway, star trails, moon, deep sky objects? And how important is wildlife? Landscape/seascape and milkyway shots generally need a wide angle lens. Wildlife and things like the moon need a telephoto lens. TBH I think you would be disappointed with a super zoom like the 18-270. I would suggest you initially narrow down what to shoot and pick a zoom lens in the either the 17-55mm range for wide angle or 50-200(ish)mm for telephoto. Also for night sky a wide aperture is useful, f2.8 but that tends to make the lens more expensive.
 
DianneR said:
Thank you. Been on wex etc having a good look my brain is fried haha, does having a 18-270mm lens cause reduction in image quality or is it best to have the seperate lenses?
Click to expand...

I think Prime lenses have a much better IQ ( Image Quality) as they have no zoom - but now you are into serious money

The 18-270mm is a good starter lens - with a fair zoom lens - once you become more proficient you can move onto primes - a standard 50mm f1.8 prime is a good place to start your collection and cheap enough to buy - whatever system you use

Les :)
 
My advice is that you get more for your money buying second hand. As for night sky just experiment. A good sturdy tripod is a must Di
 
The one thing you will learn is that this can be a very expensive hobby.
Try not to make the mistakes I did in the early days by buying too many lenses before I knew what I actually needed.
I personally try to explain to people how expensive this hobby can be before they spend too much money which is the advice I could have done with in the beginning.
As a starter lens a 100-400 will get you going with wildlife but you will eventually realise that you need s 150-600 lens.
Lenses with a focal length like 70-300 tend not to be as sharp towards the maximum focal length unless it is something like the Canon L series which is sharp throughout it's range.
Again, the 18-270 will suffer the same problems.
Lenses are an investment that you will keep for a long time whereas bodies you may change every few years.
As already mentioned mpb are quite good and they tend to sell the Tamron 100-400 for a reasonable price and I use one of these as well.
Even now the Canon 100-400L mk1 still sells for around £600 and that can be a 10+ year sold but it is a cracking lens.
It might be a good idea to look in the meet up section and see if any members are local to you who are into wildlife photography.
Meeting more experienced photographers was invaluable to me as I not only learned from them, they allowed me to try their lenses which really opened my eyes.
As for landscapes and and seascapes, the Canon 10-18 and 10-22 are very popular but not everyone likes to use an ultra wide angle lens.
However, something like the Canon 18-55 would be cheap as a starter which can give some very good results.
When it comes to astral photography, I think a lot of people use a DSLR that have been coverted to IR, there are plenty of members here who can advise you on this.
Oh, and btw - welcome to the forum :)
 
The one thing you will learn is that this can be a very expensive hobby.
Try not to make the mistakes I did in the early days by buying too many lenses before I knew what I actually needed.
I personally try to explain to people how expensive this hobby can be before they spend too much money which is the advice I could have done with in the beginning.
As a starter lens a 100-400 will get you going with wildlife but you will eventually realise that you need s 150-600 lens.
Lenses with a focal length like 70-300 tend not to be as sharp towards the maximum focal length unless it is something like the Canon L series which is sharp throughout it's range.
Again, the 18-270 will suffer the same problems.
Lenses are an investment that you will keep for a long time whereas bodies you may change every few years.
As already mentioned mpb are quite good and they tend to sell the Tamron 100-400 for a reasonable price and I use one of these as well.
Even now the Canon 100-400L mk1 still sells for around £600 and that can be a 10+ year sold but it is a cracking lens.
It might be a good idea to look in the meet up section and see if any members are local to you who are into wildlife photography.
Meeting more experienced photographers was invaluable to me as I not only learned from them, they allowed me to try their lenses which really opened my eyes.
As for landscapes and and seascapes, the Canon 10-18 and 10-22 are very popular but not everyone likes to use an ultra wide angle lens.
However, something like the Canon 18-55 would be cheap as a starter which can give some very good results.
When it comes to astral photography, I think a lot of people use a DSLR that have been coverted to IR, there are plenty of members here who can advise you on this.
Oh, and btw - welcome to the forum :)
 
Thank you so much. Its definitely a lot to take in, so im going in slow.... ha. Stuck to the canon 2000d simply as the buttons etc were familiar. Got 18-55mm lens and from mpb sigma 70-300mm. Some filters, cleaning kit, decent bag and searching for wide angle lens. Ive absolutely loved the past few days shooting away, the sea has been rough up north and Ive captured some pretty amazing shots despite not really knowing what Im doing. Fiddling with manual settings etc. Ive got to say I am impressed with the sigma, but I guess I dont have much to compare it to. I had taken a break from fb but aware there are some local groups in the area so will def get back on.
Genuinely thank you to all who replied. ❤
 
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I had a canon 10-22 which was great as a wide angle but to be honest it got very little use as i found I rarely needed less than 18mm. See how you go with the 18-55 before spending money you may not need to :)
 
DianneR said:
Got 18-55mm lens
Click to expand...
I had an EFS 18-55 lens and thought it was not very good. See if you can borrow or buy a secondhand prime lens; 35mm or 50mm are very often sold on eBay for not very much, probably less money than your filters. It might give you an interesting comparison.
 
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