Back in my youth, I’d just grab a pair of binoculars and go birding. Life was simple. I generally used a pair of 10×40 binoculars but even though I had a really good pair, they got attacked by fungus and I got a new set of binoculars that are 10×42. I don’t like them as well, but they work.

Since I started using eBird ( http://ebird.org ) to track bird sightings, I also discovered that I could add photos to my bird lists, and it seemed like a great idea. So I got a camera and was perfectly content for a couple of years. But then, I started looking at the fantastic photos others were adding to their lists and started to see the limitations of my camera.

My first camera was a Canon PowerShot SX70 HS and it’s still a fine camera. In fact, as you’ll see later in this post, I think it’s still the best all-around I-just-want-to-go-birding-and-get-a-few-photos camera. It’s got a cropped sensor but as a result, it can zoom out to 1365mm which is phenomenal. The camera is light, easy to carry, and can even do macro shots of things like spiders. I can take photos of birds without having to be right on top of them and still get relatively decent photos. A tripod is not necessary, although I use a walking stick to steady the camera at times when I feel it is necessary.

But… the one thing I had started to miss was super fine detail of things like feathers. The PowerShot is good and on a sunny day, it’s really good, but it doesn’t do so well in limited light situations and it doesn’t always quite get that fine feather detail that I really wanted.

So I did a lot of research and decided to get a Canon R5 with a 100-500mm zoom and an 800mm lens. I figured that should be good as I’d been reading all sort of stuff about how good the R5 was with animal eye/bird eye focusing, etc. However, I’d forgotten that I’m not a real photographer or a super-duper birder and it’s been really challenging.

I was soooo not prepared for the weight of the camera with a long lens attached. Or the awkwardness of a camera with a long lens. My PowerShot is ridiculously light and small and even if I zoom out to the full length, it’s still light and easy to use without needing a tripod or making my arthritic wrists ache.

Was it a mistake to get a much more expensive camera? No, not exactly, but honestly, anyone looking at a camera for nature photography needs to be prepared for the pros and cons of each approach. The following is just based upon my own experiences and issues like the fact that I’m older and have arthritis in my wrists. My personal challenges change a lot of aspects that might be non-issues for stronger, younger people. Nonetheless, here are my opinions.

Firstly and most importantly, decide what is important to you. If you really want feather detail and publish-worthy photos (not just Internet publishing but magazines/print) then your requirements might lean toward more expensive cameras like the R5. If you just want a record of what you see each day, then the PowerShot might be adequate.

Here is what I found to be the strengths and weaknesses of each type of camera.

Canon PowerShot SX70 HS

• Very light and easy to carry around. Easy to handhold and still get clear focus.
• No extra lenses required. Can shoot everything from macro to zoom at over 1300mm at the touch of the focusing lever.
• Does a credible job in sunlight. Not so good in very low light conditions.
• Okay, but not great with flying birds.
• Cannot be used for speciality projects like night sky photography (which I happen to enjoy) which require long exposures/bulb settings.
• Inexpensive.
• Not the best for fine detail, e.g. feather detail.
• Can be tricky to focus for small, flighty birds in the woods, especially if the lighting is poor which it usually is in the woods.

Canon EOS R5

• Hefty and with long lenses, very hefty. May require a tripod to achieve perfect focus (I use a monopod/walking stick when I’m walking around, or a handy tree and even then, focusing is tough).

• The famous animal eye detection sort of works, but if you’re going after flighty birds in the woods, you may find it focusing on twigs or leaves instead. I reprogrammed the back buttons to have one back button (the * button) to do animal eye detection and another back button for spot focus. In the woods, the spot focus is often more useful. I also find that it has problems if a bird is sitting on a bare twig in the foreground and way in the background there is a line of trees. It keeps wanting to focus on the line of trees, so I have to “trick it” by focusing at the base of the foreground bare bush and slowly working up to the twig where the bird is sitting. Assuming the bird stays there long enough to photograph it and that the camera doesn’t refocus on the line of trees several acres away when I reach the twig. So yeah. Animal eye does work, but not nearly as quickly or well as the media has been saying. At least not for an amateur like me. I’m still working with it, however, and many of my issues may just be inexperience and my own stupidity.

• Lenses are expensive and right now, I haven’t found a 1:1 native macro lense in the RF series–so… No spider photographs except those I take with my PowerShot. For now.

• Even my longest lens, the 800mm, can’t reach as far as the PowerShot, which means that all of my bird shots so far have been teeny tiny birds in the distance. Yes, you can crop. But it’s hard to get a bird to fill the frame because you really have to get close to your subject. I mean, really close. And you need to get the bird to fill enough of the photograph (i.e. be close) so that even if you crop it to make the bird larger, you still get the feather detail.

• This setup is really more suited to work in a blind or where you can set up and stay in one place for long periods of time because it works best on a tripod. Carrying the camera, lenses, and tripod for long periods of time over rough terrain (which means, around our property) is challenging. You can handhold to a degree but may have issues achieving perfect focus even with the lens/camera stabilization.

• You have to change lenses for different situations. If I use my 800mm lens, it doesn’t work well if a bird bounces up right in front of me and trying to change to a different lens basically means missing the shot. That’s why the 100-500mm zoom lens tends to work better for me walking around, because I can focus closer in case a bird does stop right in front of me. But then, I don’t have the reach I’m accustomed to with the PowerShot’s 1300+mm power, so birds that aren’t within a few feet of me are just basically dots, even zoomed out to the full 500mm. It’s been really frustrating for me because I’m really trying to get that feather detail and crispness that my PowerShot photos simply lack.

• If you use an extender, e.g. the 1.5RF extender, you can get a little more reach from some lenses (both my 100-500mm and 800mm lenses work with the 1.5RF extender) but you sacrifice 1 F-stop plus it slows down the autofocus even more. And with the 800mm, you absolutely have to use a tripod and have to get far away but not too far away from your subject. The extender with the 100-500mm zoom isn’t bad and I’ve been using that combination quite a bit, but again, it means you have to keep the zoom more or less fully extended so if a bird pops up within a few feet of you, too bad, no photo is possible unless you remove the extender. (Bye, bye bird.)

Even though I’m a little frustrated at the moment, the R5 does offer me a lot of things that the PowerShot doesn’t and has plenty of room for me to grow and develop. Astrophotography for one thing. And learning to be a better birder and better at getting close to birds.

Here are a few photographs from the two cameras for comparison purposes. When I first started looking at cameras, I didn’t know what to look for in comparison photographs and thought the photos from the PowerShot looked pretty much like those from fancy cameras like the R5. What I should have been looking for was the feather detail (for one thing). So here you go.

One final note: when I zoom in on the photos, they aren’t great examples of the R5’s capabilities because none of them are in perfect focus. It’s what I’m working on at the moment.

If you are looking to buy a camera, I would definitely visit some of the other sites that show R5 photos taken by people who know what the heck they are doing. You’ll be amazed at the feather detail and clarity. I’ve yet to get that, but the only thing that means is that I’m not that good at photography and am still learning.

We’ve also been having weeks of rain/overcast weather so the lack of sunshine is a factor, particularly with the zoom lenses. So take what I’ve presented here as opinion only and with several grains of salt.