Blog Post
Wildlife Photography Gear On the Cheap?
David Williams • Feb 09, 2024
Saving Money with Used Photography Gear
Confused about what gear to buy for Wildlife Photography? It's not as complicated as it seems. There is a ton of great used gear out there. I'll go through a few pros and cons on buying used gear.
I spend quite a bit of time in Africa as a wildlife photographer. A few years ago, my camera setup was a Nikon D850 and Nikon D7500 as my back up camera. My D850 was limping along because it had water damage from a river I fell into in the prior year. I went to Africa shooting wildlife again and towards the end of my trip the shutter blew out of the D850 leaving me no choice except to use the D7500 for the last 4 days of the trip. Upon returning home, I was surprised at the superb image quality. You see, the D7500 has the same components as the Nikon D5 but without the fast frame rate speed and pro video. The D5 shoots 14 frames per second (FPS) and the D7500 8 FPS. It has a smaller sensor creating smaller file sizes, but if you can live with that, you can get great features in a camera that is a step down from the extreme stuff, and buying used saves a great deal. If you are concerned about the small file size of a crop camera, just enlarge the file in Photoshop making sure to use Preserve Details 2.0. Topaz Photo AI does a good job as well.
Expensive cameras definitely give you a leg up with tons of features like eye detection, fast frames rates, etc., but Pros have been shooting wildlife images for decades without all the bells and whistles. All images in this blog post from a Nikon D7500 and 200-500mm 5.6 lens.
As an example, you can buy a used D7500 for $500-600. A used Nikon 200-500mm F5.6 lens is $650-700. Plus, with the 1.5 crop sensor on the D7500, the 200-500 lens effectively becomes a 300-750mm at f5.6 which is awesome and covers just about everything needed in wildlife photography. By comparison, I paid $6500 for a Nikon Z 800mm 6.3. Maybe I'm the idiot.
In other words, you can spend just over $1,000 and get a great setup that will create fantastic sellable imagery. Here are a few pros and cons to think about when buying used gear.
Pros:
Great gear at reasonable prices
The inventory of used gear is fabulous, everything is available
You can build a good setup quickly rather than over the years
Cons:
The gear could be faulty
No warranty
Usually no return policy
Camera could have a high shutter count
Mold in the lenses
Scratched glass
Could be refurbished
Protect yourself with a few tips:
Spend most of your money on glass. Good glass can last decades, camera bodies last 5-6 years. I have a 20 year old Nikon 300mm F4 that's still a fantastic lens. In fact, Nikon still sells it new.
Buy Lenses with VR, it's needed.
Buy used gear from a reputable source like B&H with condition ratings you can trust, or Craigslist locally where you can hold and test the equipment.
Read gear reviews to find the best gear for what you intend to shoot.
Stay clear of refurbished gear, it's not a viable option.
Buy a crop sensor camera, it helps you get extra reach on lenses as stated above, which is great for wildlife, but be aware, it hinders you on the wide angle landscape photography, because a 35mm lens with 1.5 crop turns into 52mm.
