It was around 2007 when photography became a hobby rather than me just taking snapshots. On this page I’ve gone through my history with cameras (you can see more detail on my current kit here).
Point and Shoot
I first had a play around with a camera while I was at university in 1994. I borrowed a manual 35mm film camera from my mum. It had a metering needle in the viewfinder to help with exposure but I was generally pretty clueless so the results were haphazard to say the least. A few years after that I bought a nice automatic compact 35mm film camera which helped ensure my snapshots were, at least, properly exposed most of the time but they were still snapshots. I didn’t pay much attention to digital photography when it first took off – it was expensive and I had no real interest beyond snapshots yet – but as cameras improved and prices came down I eventually, circa 2004, bought a compact digital point and shoot. The Canon Ixus 500, which was decent enough for the time.
It was around 2007 that I started to pay a little bit more attention to subjects and shot composition. My partner had (and still has) photography as an interest, with a background of having played around with SLRs from a young age as it had been an interest of their dad’s. My partner’s interest in photography and the results they were able to achieve inspired me to think a bit more about what I was doing when I took a photo. But the lack of control over e.g. aperture for depth of field on the Ixus 500 lead me to considering upgrading to something I could do more with. I still wasn’t sure if I was going to be into photography enough to justify getting a DSLR at the time (even with them becoming more affordable), so I decided to start with a bridge camera (so named as they are a bridge between point-and-shoot and DSLR) to see how I got on.
My First Bridge
The bridge camera I went for was a Fujifilm FinePix S6500fd – it wasn’t too pricey, had manual and priority modes, and seemed to get decent reviews at the time. I made good use of it over the year that followed, photographing cats, cars, wolves, butterflies, family, local carnival, etc etc. My experiences with that camera helped confirm that photography was something I enjoyed doing.
The limitations and compromises of that camera did start to become apparent to me over that year though and were frustrating. The sensor was a bit too noisy in poorer light, the resolution of 6 megapixels felt a little low, and the electronic viewfinder was a bit lacking in resolution and quality making it harder to assess the shot. The results my partner had achieved with prime lenses with a DSLR had showed me what was possible with better quality glass with a wider aperture and a better sensor so I decided it was time to make the plunge and get a DSLR myself.
My First DSLR
I still didn’t want to go too mad with kit purchasing. My partner had a Nikon D80 along with a couple of hand-me-down Nikon film SLRs from her dad, so it made sense for me to go with Nikon though so we could share lenses. I decided on the modest Nikon D60 with a kit lens to start with. I was aware that the kit lens wasn’t particularly fast and having seen the results my partner had achieved with prime lenses I also wanted some sort of prime lens as well. The D60 lacked the in-body drive motor for auto-focus on the older AF-D lenses but the AF-S prime lenses were more than I wanted to spend at that time. Since the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AF-D lens was such a good price and so well respected that I decided to get one despite the fact it would not auto-focus on the D60 (it would still meter on the D60 and I could manually focus it).
It was a good DSLR to start with and I really liked the quality of the 50mm lens. The D60’s focus confirmation light still operated in manual mode giving a guide to when the body’s auto-focus detected the subject was in focus which was a great help, although it was still hard to be sure exactly what was in focus compared to using an SLR with a focus screen (e.g. with a microprism focus aid). Over the next year I got into the hobby more and would end up buying the 35mm f1.8 AF-S lens – partly for the auto-focus capability but also partly as on a crop sensor it’s a more usable length than 50mm – and also an AF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR lens to give me stabilisation and a bit more reach than the kit lens had. I also started making use of RAW mode on the camera and post-processing the RAW files to adjust white balance and have a bit more in the way of options for highlight/shadow recovery.
My main subjects for photographing were cats (I had two and also often fed a friend’s menagerie while she was on holiday), and cars (I visited quite a few car shows/meets). I also took quite a few wolf photos – I was a member of the UK Wolf Conservation trust and visited their open days and went on a wolf walk each year. I easily got into the habit of taking my camera with me when visiting places just in case there was something interesting to shoot!
Further Adventures in DSLR
The D60 kept me happy for another year but then the D90 came out and was a tempting upgrade. Compared to the D60 it had much better performance and resolution, plus an auto-focus drive screw to allow for auto-focus on AF-D lenses. I found someone who was interested in buying my D60 for a reasonable price and so made the jump to the D90. I also acquired a few more lenses while owning the D90 – finally getting a “walkabout” zoom (Sigma 24-70mm f2.8) and a macro lens (Tamron 90mm) – both AF-D so auto-focus was driven by the auto-focus drive screw. I also bought some cheap old manual lenses via ebay to play around with. And finally I also acquired a flash (SB-600) to be able to do off-camera flash (the camera could command the flash remotely).
The D90 was very capable and served me well for a couple of years. I was happy enough with a DX sensor so wasn’t tempted to jump to full frame. However when the D7000 got released although it wasn’t worlds ahead of the D90 it had just enough small improvements for me to start thinking about upgrading (e.g. higher resolution sensor with better low light performance, aperture coupling ring to meter on the manual lenses I had, superior AF system, more robust body). A friend expressed interested in buying my D90 and so I decided to make the jump.
I used the D7000 almost exclusively for the next 8 years. I still had no desire to switch to full frame and neither of the follow-up models to the D7000, the D7100 and D7200, added enough extra over the D7000 for me to consider moving to either of those. I started to do less car photograph and a little more animal photography (birds and also animals at zoos, along with continuing the Wolf Trust visits) so purchased a couple of mid-range zooms. The first of those was a Nikon 70-300mm VRII lens to complement my 24-70mm and give me a bit more range than the 18-200mm lens. The relative slowness and softness of the 70-300mm lens started to niggle though so I then bought a Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 EX DG OS HSM lens.
I was still mostly photographing cats, cars and zoo animals. However on one occasion I took a few shots while attending a wedding of a member of my partner’s extended family – the couple turned to have been rather disappointed by the results from their official photographer and were quite pleased I’d managed to capture a few lovely moments from the day. I also photographed the choir my partner sings in and they used a couple of the photos on their website. For a few years I popped along to the annual “Wings and Wheels” event at Dunsfold and get some shots of the planes performing aerobatics which was fun. With the flash guns I’ve had a go at action photography of my cats, with some of the shots being used to advertise cat toys and I’ve also had a couple of my cat photos used in cat-related books as well. And visiting to Richmond and Bushy parks to take photos of the deer was something I started to regularly do.
Back To Bridge
I was finding myself photographing birds and animals more but finding the two zoom lenses I had (which, on the Nikon DX sensor, were equivalent to 300mm and 450mm at their long ends) a little frustrating. High quality longer lenses were primes, bulky and very expensive; longer zooms or tele-converters all had the compromises of some softness and potentially limiting minimum apertures. So I wasn’t minded to get a longer lens for the Nikon.
However bridge cameras had been steadily improving since my first Fuji – advances in sensor technology meant the small sensors they use were actually starting to perform ok in terms of resolution, dynamic range and noise despite the smaller sensor sizes – and the small sensor size meant it was viable for the manufacturers to design a zoom that was quite long in terms of 35mm equivalence (due to the crop factor). This included some “super zooms” such as the Nikon B700 (1440mm equivalent), the P900 (2000mm equivalent) and the P1000 (with its bonkers 3000mm equivalent zoom). So I started to wonder if maybe having a super zoom bridge as a companion to my D7000 would be a way to solve my frustration with zoom length.
But I had concerns I’d find a super zoom bridge frustrating in other ways. Sensor noise, lens softness, relative slow speed of auto-focus and the limitations of stabilisation at those zoom lengths could mean the results would be too hit and miss for bird photos. And I could end up being tempted to still carry the Nikon as well just in case I came across any subjects that the Nikon was far better suited to. So I was on the fence about whether I actually wanted to spend the money for a super zoom bridge.
I kept revisiting the question of a bridge camera from time to time over the course of a few months. I’d originally excluded the Sony DSC-RX10 from my shortlist due to the cost and the max zoom length being a “mere” 600mm equivalent. But it seemed to be very well liked and I read forum posts from DSLR owners happily using both the Mark 3 and Mark 4 for wildlife/safari photography and being pleased with the results – so perhaps 600mm would be enough? The Mark 4 had added phase-detection auto-focus in addition to contrast-detection giving it very quick claimed auto-focus speeds. I decided to keep an eye on Mark 4 prices and continue to weigh it up as an option.
I noticed several grey importers were quite a bit cheaper than UK dealers for the RX10iv, but I usually dismiss these as an option as there can be warranty problems (both claiming initially from the seller, generally Hong Kong-based, and also from the manufacturer with longer warranties). But I noticed that one of the importers had very high TrustPilot ratings as well as reports (which seemed authentic) from people who had claimed on their 3 year warranty successfully. After musing on it a little longer I decided to take the plunge and bought one towards the end of November 2019.
DSLR Neglect
I bought it as winter approached with the daylight hours are getting shorter and weather greyer/wetter so perhaps not the best timing, but a couple of days after it arrived though there was some glorious weather and I went for a long walk around Windsor Great Park to have my first proper go with it. As well as the usual array of autumnal trees, random birds, monuments and plant life I was lucky enough to encounter a lot of deer fairly relaxed and not far from the path (on previous visits there they’ve always been few, distant and skittish). I was really happy with the results from the day!
In the first 6 months of owning the RX10 I used it for photographing flowers, swans, geese, my cats, small birds, the moon, red kites, various animals at zoos (Marwell and London). It performed so well that I wasn’t using my Nikon DSLR any more – not least because of the convenience of not having to carry a set of lenses around. The 600mm zoom length proved sufficient most of the time although occasionally with bird photography I still felt a little more would be good. A party trick of the Mark 4 is its incredible burst speed with the electronic shutter for continuous shooting – it can manage 24 frames per second with continuous focus and exposure even with RAW and this can help with e.g. further compensating for camera shake (over and above the stabilisation) by maximising the chance of catching a shot at a moment when the camera is steady.
The drawbacks it has compared to the D7000 (and lenses I have for that) are: the aperture limitations mean no shallow depth of field for wide shotss, no true macro, low light performance isn’t quite as good, you don’t have to stop down much from its sweet spot of f/4.0 to get softness (although I discovered that at the 600mm end it’s very sensitive to protective filters causing softening), battery life is poor, and the motorised zoom is less direct and slower than mechanical. I also can’t use my existing flashes with it. But for the most part I rarely noticed those downsides for my usage and the benefits of the RX10 mean that I pretty much always picked it over the D7000.
Micro Four Thirds
The RX10 served me very well for 6 years but I was finding I was enjoying bird photography more and more and finding a couple of aspects of the RX10 frustrating: the 600mm felt a little too short at times for small birds, the start-up time and zoom action was slow due to the motorised lens, and the 1″-type sensor in the RX10 became frustratingly noisy other than in bright conditions.
I’d seen some decent wildlife photos on social media that had been taking using Micro Four Thirds cameras and, after a bit of research, decided it was worth taking a punt on a used combination of a Panasonic G9 and a Panasonic-Leica 100-400mm lens (giving 200-800mm equivalent zoom).
I’ve found the combination to work well and does give me a bit more zoom length, quicker start-up time and zooming capability and marginally better noise for the same light conditions than the RX10. Added bonuses are that the battery life is better, the rear screen has more articulation, and the animal detection for the focus seems to do slightly better at recognition (although sometimes it does get false positives). The downsides are it’s heavier and less compact, the lack of phase-detection in the auto-focus system (which the version 2 does have) make it much poorer for moving subjects than the RX10 and of course I’m limited to the zoom range of the lens I have mounted.
I now usually take the G9 plus 100-400mm lens with me if I’m going to end up going for a walk where there’s a decent chance I’ll want to photograph wildlife. I take the RX10 with me instead if I may want to photograph a wider range of subjects or if I’m on a long cycle ride where I might stop off at nature reserves en-route but my focus is more on the ride (as the RX10 is lighter and comfortably fits in the pannier top bag). If I were going somewhere where I know I’d be shooting moving subjects (e.g. a falconry centre with bird displays) I’d also take the RX10.