Outdoor Photography

78 Outdoor Photography February 2018

The bott om line

Photography has never been cheap, but do we really have to upgrade our kit as often as

we think? Laurie Campbell questions how much we need to spend to get fi rst-class results

A few years ago I made one of my rare visits to

London. It coincided with the awards ceremony

for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year

competition, which was followed by a private

viewing of the exhibition of the winning

and commended photographs. As always,

I made my way to the entries from the young

photographers fi rst. The images were naturally

of a technically high standard and being fresh

and innovative had all the prerequisites of being

included in the competition.

My attention wandered to the footnotes of

the captions that gave information on the type

of equipment used. From past results in this

category I’d grown to expect to see most of the

images obtained using high-end equipment, but

was surprised to see that a particularly striking

image – printed to beyond A2 size – had been

photographed with a Nikon D100.

At the time, this 6.1MP body had long been

discontinued, but the quality was close to

what I might have expected from my then-

current camera, the 12.1MP Nikon D3. Sure,

the autofocus and high-ISO performance on

my D3 would be better, but given a fair trial by

using a combination of good working technique

and working within the limitations of the

camera, the image clearly showed what was

possible with a camera that was widely available

secondhand at a cost that was around thirty

times less than my own. This was quite a reality

check and it got me thinking about just how

aff ordable it had become to acquire equipment

capable of producing professional-quality results.

For nature photographers the issue is a

little more complicated, because of the costly

specialised lenses needed to photograph

anything from a close-up of a moth to a puffi n

in fl ight. Of course, not everyone wants to

Below Reverse-mounted wideangle lenses are

useful when you want to take macro photographs

at a magnifi cation greater than life size (1:1).

For this image I used an inexpensive reversing

ring and a secondhand 24mm f/2 Nikon lens

in a ‘sold as seen’ condition.

Nikon D3X with Nikon 24mm f/2 manual focus lens

(reverse mounted), ISO 100, 1/80sec at f/16, Nikon

SB800 fl ash with homemade soft box, handheld

LIFE IN THE WILD

78_79 Life in the Wild 227.indd 78 11/12/2017 15:24