Our granddaughter Wylie is 9 and in the 5th grade at an academic private school. (She skipped the 3rd grade and is having a great time with kids twice her size!) She is very bright and loves birds and anything nature, and has been using her mother’s iPhone to shoot hummingbirds here. She makes a beeline for the feeder and stays there for hours. I showed her how to tape over all but one port and set up the shop lights I use for birds at the feeders. But she needs a much better camera. She has a computer and mom and pop say Photoshop Elements sounds like a great place to start.
Problem is, I know nothing about today’s entry-level cameras. A good range zoom lens is spec #1. And definitely raw capture.
Any ideas are welcome!
Oh yeah – and the feeder is getting moved to a better location for her!
Sorry, been a little absent of late, but this topic really peaked my interest! My Grandsdon is 9 and I just gifted him my “old’ Nikon D7100” earlier this year. Surprisingly, he figured out how to use as a video camera!
For several years, I’d let him take my camera to take pictures, including my newer Mirrorless versions.
I set things up on “auto”, but made sure he knew how to “focus” and get the green square. No sense at 9yrs old to start teaching about the relationship between aperture, shutter speed and and film speed…
Fast forward a few outings… he very quickly figured out my Z7ii had a touch screen… his d7100 did not…
My recommendation… I know you know the Canon systems… start with the entry-level system that progresses to the top-end R5/6 (whatever…) My point is, rather than grab an older system that doesn’t have a touch-screen, like my D7100, for example, get something that has the same features as the highend - but maybe lacks resolution, speed, etc. I don’t know what that is in the Canon space.
But is sure sounds like your grandaughter is ripe - and trust me, they do better and pick up quicker with the technologies then we ever will. And with your tutilage… I’m sure she will be capturing some winners quickly!
Thanks, @Lon_Overacker! Yeah, I think she has an aptitude for this stuff. One day when she was two, I was showing her some things I had just shot on the back of the camera, and without hesitation she swiped to advance through the frames. The bizarre thing was, it was the 5D Mk IV, which I had just gotten, and I didn’t know you could do that!!! (It was new with that model.)
My 2 cents: get her something lightweight. I’m at the other end of the age spectrum (!) and find that the OM Systems (ex-Olympus) OM1 is so comfortable to use. Your granddaughter can get straight into stacking with it if she wants (Focus Bracket works better than the inbuilt stacking function) - she’ll learn it in no time, esp. with your experience as a guide. As for zoom, the 100-400mm lens is not expensive and a good bit lighter than the Canon equivalent. Maybe add a 1.4TC. British bird photographer Mike Lane has some very clear YouTube videos to help set up the OM1 for bird photographers.
All this said, you may decide to gift her one of your Canon systems. Can’t go wrong with them - just that they are much heavier! Anyway, it’s always great to hear of young people wanting to get into nature photography. Good luck.
Diane, I can’t give you any advice about a camera for Wiley. But, oh my! Hasn’t she grown. No doubt she possesses her grannies brain power! I’m sure any camera she ends up with, she’ll make it sing!
Thanks guys! She is very bright and enthusiastic about all things in nature. Also a very promising artist, mostly into birds. (Grandma Donna is her mentor there!) I’m thinking a good P/S with a long zoom to start with – something she can pack around with abandon. She’s very petite so not ready to handle a “grownup” body yet.
Diane, I was thinking about the camera I bought to lighten my load when hiking. It’s a Canon Power-Shot SX70HS. It’s been around for a longt ime. I have a friend who has one and she uses it like a pro in “Auto”. I have only liked images I’ve taken with it when there’s been nice light. Any ISO over 200 sucks! But the zoom is great for a wide range of subjects from wide-angle to super-telephoto. It’s very lightweight and didn’t cost a heap.
Thanks, @Glenys_Passier – that sounds like what I’m aiming for. I wonder if any of the newer ones are decent above ISO 200? I’ll have to stop in at the local camera store. She would be starting in Auto I’m sure, but I hope not for too long. And that reminds me that her first lesson has to about good light. And the second about good BG.
She looks rather petite, so a smaller, lighter weight camera is in order, I think.
I have small hands for a man and find the full frame DSLR’s to feel like bricks. I am still using my now ancient Nikon D7100 which has been a great performer for me. A camera of that size/weight will also mean a lighter load when she adds things like longer lenses and a tripod later on,
If the young lady has a bent toward avian photography, a camera with excellent performance at high ISO values will be necessity in my opinion.
I suppose the bottom line is: Purchase a camera/camera system she can grow into, rather than something she will outgrow.
I hope the search goes well and she is happy. Let us know how it goes.
-P
Good point, @Preston_Birdwell. I’m thinking smaller sensor sizes are the place to start looking. Need to pay a visit to my local camera store for starters.
Hi Diane. I’m coming in a little late, but I would recommend a Canon EOS Rebel T7 DSLR with 18-55mm and 75-300mm Lenses. $619.00 from B&H. That should hold her for a long time.
I think it’s important to give her a camera that allows her to make images that she will be proud of. You don’t want her to be turned off from photography because of the quality of her images. Get her a camera with a good quality sensor that produces good color right out of the camera without photoshopping. There are websites where you can download images of different camera manufacturers to see what you will end up with. That’s the process I went through early on in my digital career. I would definitely get her a mirrorless camera. I would also get one that allows some automation but has a manual setting as well.
Thanks everyone! Still in decision mode. I’ve been swamped lately with fall planting and planning for a big upcoming family event, so I’ll push this out to be a Christmas present so I will have a while to decide. Definitely want good quality from the outset, and raw files. Something she can start with on Auto and move up to various M modes as she learns. At some point she can inherit my older bodies and lenses as I succumb to newer ones. (What a great excuse to upgrade! So I’d better teach her well!)
Granddaughter Wylie finally had time to come up and play with my camera. I set it on P mode (wasn’t even sure it had one) and put focus back on the shutter button and we sat in the open near the hummingbird feeder. I taped over all the ports except one on the side, to put feeding birds in a good position. I balanced the camera (R5 with the 100-500 + 1.4X) on a gimbal head with a little tension on the knobs so it was easy to aim. I showed her the center sensor and how to get it on the subject and hold the focus button halfway down and watch eye focus dance around, and how to aim at the feeder to re-acquire focus when it jumped to the BG. I put it on single shot to save electrons. She mastered things quickly and sat there over two hours absorbed in ambushing the little guys and even got a few songbirds at their nearby feeder. When we looked at the images on my computer she was quick (and right) about deciding which ones we could toss out. I was amazed it was only about a third of them. Her worst problem was difficult light for the last hour.
Here is her favorite (and mine), with only a slight crop. I had her shooting JPEG to keep things simple but I think she’ll be ready for raw soon. As we were running through them in Lightroom she asked what app I was using. She has a kiddie camera and a MacBook, and is confident with the Photos app.
There is barely room for a hummingbird feeder at their condo, but we’ll set up feeders at Auntie Annie’s (nearby; big yard) and at the other grandparent’s roomy spread, where she can maybe shoot off beanbags for now. And I’ll be jealous of the birds she can get there that I don’t get up here, an hour north! If she gets into this, I’m thinking she could do with a Canon R10 (APS-C) with the Sigma 16-300, and then maybe the miniature Canon 800mm f/11. A scaled-down version of the grownup toys.
Hi Diane. I’d say right now, you’re going to have to look at used if you want a point and shoot bridge camera. For some reason, they’re out of fashion right now and the only things with decent zoom are pretty bulky for a youngster. For my two nickels added to the contribution, when I first wanted to try mirrorless, I bought a used Sony A6500. The 6000 series turned out to be pretty small for my hands and I was always pushing the wrong part of the multifunction dial on the back, but a youngster would probably be fine with something like that. As a crop sensor camera the lenses are a bit smaller and lighter. The micro 4/3 cameras are certainly another alternative. If there’s still a real camera store in your area, I’d take her in and let her handle some.
Thanks, @Dennis_Plank and @Marylynne_Diggs! After choosing this one, I showed her how to remove the feeder with PS (and I think it can be done with LR – but I’m still using what is familiar to me). She was quite taken with that touch, so I think she’ll be ready for grown-up software soon. Maybe PS Elements (with ACR) at first. Not sure what her computer will handle. But I’d love to get her using LR. She seems to take to technology easily.
I totally get showing her what you do and what you know.
You can remove objects in LR using several tools, including the AI object removal and generative removal. Just a click.
What I love about LR is the cataloging function and the ease of using layer masks. PS layers avd smart smart objects confused me. It’s still non-destructive. Lr does it all without bridge, acr, etc.
Of course showing her what you use makes total sense.
I’m certain, with your guideance, Wylie will be proficent with any camera you (or she) chooses. And that goes the same for any editing as well. She couldn’t have a better teacher.
