BRAINERD — For wildlife photographers a portion of their time is spent sitting idly in a blind, waiting for some unsuspecting critter to show. So, we often have a lot of time to think. Lately, some of my thoughts have been about how far photography equipment has come since I purchased my first camera.
The year was 1981.
I vividly remember the cold January day I waltzed into my local bank, and sheepishly asked the loan officer for some money.
“I want to buy a camera and 300mm telephoto lens,” I told the guy. “I’ll need $1,200 bucks.”
He agreed to loan me the money. My hand was shaking as I signed the papers. At the time I drove a dilapidated pickup truck worth about $300. I lived in a mouse-infested dumpy little trailer house for which I paid $100 per month to rent. So, $1,200 was a lot of money to me.
Photo by Bill Marchel
A few days later a gentleman dressed in drab brown clothing and driving an equally drab brown delivery truck handed me a package containing my newly purchased photography gear.
The next day I was in the woods bearing my new photography equipment hoping to capture on film (digital images were a long way off) some of the white-tailed deer that wintered in a tamarack swamp not far from home.
I remember it was a cold day — my cheeks burned — as I patiently waited along a deer trail etched in the January snow, dressed in all the cold weather clothing I owned. Soon a deer appeared. I spun the focus ring on my telephoto lens and snapped a photo. Yes, one photo. Then, using my thumb, I cocked the camera and snapped another photo, and maybe another.
It was sometime later when another deer walked the same beaten trail. Again, I focused my lens, but when I depressed the camera’s shutter button nothing happened. Well, you guessed it. The tiny button battery that operated that 1981 camera had become cold and useless.
Now, only rarely do I spin the focus ring on my telephoto lens while photographing wildlife. Autofocus lenses and camera bodies are accurate and fast; in most cases outperforming even the best photographers who still sometimes resort to manual focus. Sharp images of frame-filing birds in flight, especially fast birds like ducks, were nearly impossible to get with the old manual focus photography equipment. Even now each generation of new photography tools is improved over the former.
And battery power? It’s not an issue anymore. A fully charged battery in most modern cameras will operate in any weather and have the capacity to shoot hundreds if not thousands of images before a recharge is necessary. And, modern cameras can shoot as many as 20 frames per second, not one at a time like my 1981 model.
Photo by Bill Marchel
Perhaps the most pronounced improvement in wildlife photography equipment since my initiation in 1981 is the advancement in digital image quality at the higher ISOs. Back in the early days, prior to digital, I shot 50 ISO slide film almost exclusively. In a nutshell that meant low light and action photography was extremely difficult if not impossible. Now, with my newest cameras, I can shoot at ISOs of 1000, or even higher. Those stats might not seem like much but they are huge to me, especially when attempting to capture high-speed or low-light wildlife subjects.
And guess what?
The same $1,200 I laid out in 1981 can buy a potential beginner wildlife photographer a camera and telephoto lens that immensely surpasses the equipment I so cautiously purchased way back then.
Despite the dramatic improvement in equipment, unfortunately, all is not well for current wildlife photographers. Markets for wildlife images have dwindled or disappeared, prices paid for images have been slashed, etc.
I could on and on. Instead, that’s fodder for a future column.
BILL MARCHEL is a wildlife and outdoors photographer and writer whose work appears in many regional and national publications as well as the Brainerd Dispatch. He may be reached at bill@billmarchel.com. You also can visit his website at BillMARCHEL.com.