Upgrading My Camera Kit

This week I did a thing and made a significant upgrade to my camera kit for wildlife photography. After many years of looking longingly at the astronomic prices of quality telephoto lenses, I took the plunge and bought my first serious lens; the Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 prime. It cost me £650 for a second hand (albeit almost mint condition) version from Japan. Of course the professionals would have you believe that this is a 'budget' lens, but realistically it took me the best part of a decade to be able to justify it financially. Not because I could never have afforded it in this time, but because there is always seemingly something more urgent to spend your saved money on. There's certainly no question that the expense of good quality photography gear is a real barrier preventing some people picking up photography as a serious hobby or profession.

I rented this lens out for a weekend a few years back and remember being obssessed with it. The sharpness of the lens is notorious and pretty much unrivalled within its price bracket (presumably why it remained in production between 1993 and 2020). I remember being amazed that even the slightly poorer images I took with this lens were miles better than anything I could achieve on my trusty 75-300mm Canon f/4-5.6 III that served me for so many years. It felt like I got bailed out every time I thought I had taken a bad photo. On top of that, the relatively small size and weight of the 400mm f/5.6 make it a great option as a field birdwatcher's lens. This appealed to me, as I'm generally not the kind of birdwatcher that enjoys being stationary for multiple hours in a hide with a scope. 

At the same time as ordering the new 400mm, I decided to look into the possibility of upgrading my camera body too. I've always been one to believe that the lens is the most important part of your kit setup, and that the camera body is secondary. But I had owned and regularly used my Canon 500D for 11 years, and it was beginning to show signs of its age (to give you an idea, the rubber surround to the viewfinder has been held in place with blu-tack for the past few years!). I was attracted to the idea of a camera body with a better frames per second performance, and possibly a higher quality sensor. A few days later and I had ordered a new Canon 90D. It's amazing how quickly things can escalate. I managed to get this on a 24 month, 0% interest payment plan from Wex (which effectively works out at around £50/month). I had a slightly nervous wait for the camera to arrive, having read some concerns raised by some that the low 'resolving power' of some of the old telephoto lenses may be difficult for the 32MP crop sensor on the 90D to handle. Luckily no such issues seem to have arisen thus far, and I had a joyous half an hour photographing birds in the garden before work. These were my results: 

Overall I was really happy with the results I got and I'm really excited to give it a proper field test whilst using it handheld rather than tripod mounted. The whole experience of upgrading my kit has reminded me that one of the most important factors in achieving satisfaction with new cameras and lenses is the kit you are upgrading from. I suspect my experiences upgrading from a 500D and cheap 75-300mm lens could be very different from people upgrading from a 7D Mk I and a £500+ telephoto. 

My only complaint with the 90D is that the insane frame rate (10 per second!) means that you end up having to sift through hundreds of images (many of which are almost identical to each other). Fair to say though that if my main complaint with the camera is that it shoots too fast, then I'm really beginning to nit pick. More photos to come soon.