Beginner Which Camera for an Amateur Landscape Photographer?

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Olivia
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Photography is not a profession but a hobby. I like traveling and have a thing for taking great landscape photographs. Clicking pictures of beaches, rocks, mountain peaks and beautiful landscapes is something I love. Have already purchased Nikon D3200 with 18-55 kit lens and a tripod. As I said not a professional photographer but still have a thing for taking great photographers. Going to Switzerland in June and already familiar with rule of thirds and other photography basics. Just need some suggestions on gear.
 
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Two important things for us to know;

1) How do you feel your current kit is limiting you?
This will help us to suggest gear that will get round those limits

2) What is your budget?
This will reduce the number of folks who suggest your only option is to change to a complete Phase One setup (google Phase One, 100Mp of medium format loveliness, for those with a generous budget... :D)
 
Welcome to TP Olivia!

Your existing equipment will be fine for the moment. The most important factor is your passion! it's great to hear the word "love" with "taking pictures". As it's still new - you have lots to learn. In a while you may find that you're starting to be limited by your equipment. That's the time to start asking "what should I get?" - when you know what you're being limited by.

In terms of landscape photography, there are often other things (tripods, filters, spare batteries - even software) that can improve photographs before buying a new camera.

More often than not though - it's knowledge that's needed once you've got the basic gear. Go. Take pictures, then come and post them here along with your thoughts on what you wanted to achieve.
 
Your existing equipment will be fine for the moment.... In a while you may find that you're starting to be limited by your equipment. That's the time to start asking "what should I get?" - when you know what you're being limited by.
Excellent advice.
 
The D3200 is a very capable camera and plenty good enough for general landscape photography. A major contributor to producing impressive landscape is being in the right place at the right time of day. Composition and light are key.
 
Many cameras will do fine. It is not like saying a Nikon D4 is more suited for photojournalism and a Nikon D3200 is more suited for landscape. It is mostly a case of how the photographer use the cameras. You got a good kit there, and even you mention you are already familiar with the rules of thirds, so you and your kit will be fine.

My advice is just not worry about it, take a deep breath, go with the flow. Go there, check your camera's settings, adjust settings, set up, and enjoy yourself taking photos.
 
Two important things for us to know;

1) How do you feel your current kit is limiting you?
This will help us to suggest gear that will get round those limits

2) What is your budget?
This will reduce the number of folks who suggest your only option is to change to a complete Phase One setup (google Phase One, 100Mp of medium format loveliness, for those with a generous budget... :D)
Thanks for the information. I haven't really been limited anywhere in the past while taking landscape shots. Just wanted to make sure that I have the necessary lenses for my first international trip.
 
I bought a Nikon D3300 last year, with the 18-55mm kit lens, and the very next week went on holiday to Snowdonia, the kit lens was perfect, pretty much all my shots were taken at the 18mm end and I didn't feel there was anything I was missing or holding me back, and the photos I took (all without really knowing what I was doing) were better than I'd ever hoped for.
 
Thank you everybody. Seems like it has got more to do with the person behind lens rather than the camera. Will post back the images for further discussion. Thanks again :D
One thing you might want take with you is a bubble cube. Fits on the hot shoe and is useful for getting the horizontal right. Main thing is to enjoy your trip, Switzerland is a beautiful place.
 
Just take your time, look carefully in the viewfinder, try and get rid of any stuff you don't like by moving around, up or down left or right, before taking the shot.
 
I'd buy:
* a bubble level so you don't have to fix it in post
* a cheap Chinese remote so I don't have to touch the camera for long exposures

Probably £12.

I also had fun doing some very long exposures using a cheap 10 stop filter.
 
Thank you everybody. Seems like it has got more to do with the person behind lens rather than the camera. Will post back the images for further discussion. Thanks again :D

A camera never ever took a good photograph.

If it was the camera that can take the best photos, we all may as well be out of job (for professional photographers) and take up stamp collecting as a new hobby (for amateur photographers) while the camera magically walks on a tripod and take photos by itself. :)

In the old days, it used to be "That was done by Don McCullin", "It's one of David Bailey's photos", and "Isn't that Eddie Adam's work?"

In the future, it's like "Oh Nikon D9 did this", "The Canon 1Dz Mark XXVII took that photo", and "This is one of Sony Alpha 9999's finest works"

Olivia...

Worrying about if your equipment is good enough or not will only hold you back. It happens to most people, "I can't do that kind of work, I don't have the right tools!", sometimes some of us have to become MacGyver and make do with what we have. It is sometimes okay to ask for suggestions on what other gear to buy and take, but you are likely to get an endless stream of suggestions, and when you go overseas, you may as well end up opening a camera shop.

My suggestion to you is to relax, check your equipment, make sure spare batteries are charged up, go outdoors, take photos. If you find yourself having a bit of a problem, just figure a way around. Not much different from a guy trying to hammer in a nail, find that the hammer is missing from his tool bag, decided to use a wrench to hammer in the nail. I'm not suggesting if you're missing a lens, you get a pencil and draw a picture of a mountain on the camera's CCD. I meant for example, you if you don't have a cable release or a remote control, then use the camera's self-timer so that you can keep your hands off the camera to avoid camera shake. Afterwards, you can write in your shopping list I would like to have a cable release or remote control.

Best way to build up your equipment is to expand over time as you learn what other piece of kit you could do with, rather than have an overdose of suggestions, buy everything you can get, only to find that you carried some pieces of kit that you never actually used at all.

Also I would suggest that newbie photographers should look into the camera bags of the experienced photographers (amateur or pro), to get some ideas. But better to see what they got, and image this is your goal in the future, not actually copy their kit item for item. As your experience grows, you'll be filling up your camera bag with items you really need, rather than fill it up with items that you don't need, but the other photographer do.
 
1/ SPARE BATTERIES!
2/ MORE Spare batteries
3/ Spare SD card
4/ Another spare SD card
5/ Err.. another SD card!!!!

Oh Kay.. first off I have the same camera, D3200 and same lens, kit 18-55. I have had them about five years, replacing, curiously for supposedly the most compact crop-sensor 'full' SLR on the market.... TWO winder equipped Olympus OM film cameras.. and consumed the space they took, plus the space the twenty film pots did beneath! So much for the revolution of electronic miniaturisation! Lol.. back on topic.... ish.

In the time I have had the D3200, after capitulating to electric-picture-making, or more precisely, the cost of widgetal SLR's falling to something daftly affordable... the camera-bag has been stretched at the seams, as I have acquired lenses to cover the same sort of range I had for the old film photo-makers.... fash-gun has been evicted to make space for them... see comments vis miniaturization!!! And I don't actually have the same range at the long end I do for film...

I had 12mm fish for film, and that was a pivotal connundrum going widgetal; the 'crop-factor' stretches effective lens length, it don't shrink it. The 'kit' 18-55 has the effective-framing on APS-C digital, as a 27-82mm on full-frame/35mm film. Favoured 'normal' lens on film was a Tameron 28-70.. that's pretty close... a Vivitar 70-210 took care of the long-end of things, and a 3x tele-adapter took me way beyond anything I ever needed very often. The 'kit' 55-300, gave me that long-end, and with the effective framing of a 450mm lens on a crop-sensor, so no need of an adapter... and still rarely used at anything close to the long-end. B-U-T on the short-side... the crop-factor bites.... the fish had given me a taste for the Wide-Side, and I always wanted 'more', and struggled to get it. Anything much wider than maybe 24mm was pretty rare and expensive for film cameras, and even the fish, at 12mm delivering a masked-circle and around 150Deg FoV, always left me wanting the full-fish-dish, in a 180Deg FoV on both axis, 'full-round' lens. These were even more rare and expensive for film... and virtually non-ecistant for crop-sensor digital... begged an 8mm fish to get it, and that would only give full-round 180FoV on uber-expensive Full-Frame widgetal... one of the reasons for sticking with what I got, until Sigma released the 4.5 'Full-Round' fish from crop-sensor digital SLR's.. and prompted the D3200.. which at the time, had about the highest pixel count on the market, which is convenient if you plan to shoot fish, that only use half of them! B-U-T, does hint at the dilemma of crop-sensor digital when you are looking at the wide-side, which if you are interested in Landscape... sorry, I cant even think the word without humming "Einstein-a-go-go'.. which was a one hit wonder in 1981, ISTR... but I detract, again.....

See Tutorial, Ultra-Wide-Angle vs Kit & Stitch, featuring a fish!, on the perils of wide for landscapes, and the bieve belief that more land must make for more landscape... it doesn't. But may be of interest. And point is, that that kit 18-55, is still very usefully 'wide', and more than enough for most, most of the time. As said, it is equivalent to a 27-80 on full-frame, and few went much wider than that in days of film... And as tutorial, in days-of-didgital, you can get a heck of a lot of wide with a kit lens, and a little panorama stitching, if you want/need to.

Back to that 18-55 Kit lens... very easy when you have just got into the persuit, with so many gadgets begging your attension to get rather inundated with Gadget-Acquisition-Syndrome, and CONVINCE yourself without an awful lot of encouragement that you MUST have, NAY you absolutely NEED, whatever your magpie-eye has spotted lately... and that Kit 18-55 is a good candidate to be derided, ridicules and replaced... it IS a 'cheap' lens.... when I bought my camera, I got it with the kit, that all in the box actually cost me LESS with the lens, than if I had tried to buy the camera 'body-only'... so actually something LESS than 'FREE' and stuff don't come much cheaper than that!!!! Add a rather plasticie construction, and obvious cost-cut features and its easy to be convinced you 'need' something better..... BUT... and this is the nub... I have had that camera and that lens over half a decade.... biting the bullet to buy the Sigma 4.5mm Full-Round fish, and after, the estate-agents-favorite, the similarly expensive Sigma 8-16 Ultra-Wide-Angle.... to sit in the bag, denying the miniaturization of even smaller-format Digital camera.... NOT to get blugger all actual use! That 18-55 IS by a long stretch, my 'most-used' lens..... Yeah... I could gripe about the manual focus; I could moan about the pixel-peeping ultimate image quality; I could moan about its rather restrictive apertures, I could moan a LOT... B-U-T It's still my most used lens. Its bloomin versatile, its zoom range covers the most used field of view; the apertures are not that limiting, and certainly not for landscapes where you probably want more Depth of Field anyway, not razor thin shallow-focus like you hope for from a fast-prime.....which is another hobby-horse... and on... D3200's 24Mega-Pixie sensor, when pixel peeping, did, IMO start to show up how compromised the optical quality of the kit lenses is... BUT only if you do pixel peep, and you do have something to compare it to....... and 'sharpness' is an illusion... another hobby-horse again.... I should open a stables!

Bottom line.... that kit 18-55 is a fantastic lens for the money it just doesn't cost... and you can spend an awful lot of money on alternatives to NOT actually get an awful lot 'more' of whatever property you are hoping for... and either which way, however much 'better; even lab-tests may say a lens is... don't mean your photo's will be!

Good Photographers take good pictures... not 'good' cameras.

SWITZERLAND... cant say I have ever been there.... seen a bit of it from the top of a mountain in France, I think, but one country I cant say I have visited.... bit like Cornwall!!! However.... if you are traveling, particularly up bleeding mountains!!! PACK LIGHT!!!

As verbosity has its head, I may as well continue; many decades ago I was at the top of Great Malvern, taking a snap of the scenery with a very compact Olympus XA2 film camera... diddy little thing, I was given it for my 11th Birtrhday. Wasn't a 'cheap' camera then, and cost as much as many mid-range SLR's; but the thing has cranked up moon-and back mileage traveling with me, any-where and every-where BUT probably Switzerland! Fantastic little thing; 35mm 'full-frame' loveliness, in a package as compact as a pack-of-fags, that slips in your pocket, like it wasn't there. So, at the top of Gt Malvern... I had parked up, looked around and decided to clamber up to see what I could see..... and decided... err, NO... I will leave the camera bag in the car!!! I did NOT really need to lug a pair of winder equipped OM's and a full range of lenses, and a ruddy great flash-gun and all that spare film up that damg hill! So I made sure the XA2 was in my pocket, let the dog stop licking the windows and get out the back, and wended my way up the path.... WHERE I was accosted, by a chap coming down, with a huge gadget bag and a huge SLR around his kneck... who offered the 'helpful' advice, "Ah! Well, if you want to take decent photo's you will want to get a 35mm camera!".... which sort of set the tone for the rest of the conversation.... the XA2 IS a 35mm camera! Just a rather small one! I was then subject to a lecture on all the advantages of interchangeable lenses, and having the 'right' gear.... as far as I was concerned I did! I mean I COULD have lugged the gadget bag up that hill.. and I would likely have used no more than a big SLR body fitted with the 28-70 zoom... set at about 35mm anyway! I wouldn't have needed the flash, and I was making do for lack of tripod, resting the camera on a park-bench, and using the self timer.... so WHY did I need lug all that cr@p up the hill, to NOT actually use it!??!?!? Smile and nod, Michael, smile and nod!!! Chap was being 'nice', and thought he was being helpful... I am sure.....

Very easy to get carried away and literally bogged down in 'all the gear'... and loose sight of what you are about... LOOKING!!

That is where you start to find photo's, and better photo's start by looking more carefully, before you press the shutter.

And absolutely no dang good what so ever, if when you have done your looking and come to press the shutter..... the batteries are flat... and or there's no space left on the SD card!!!! You aint going to have a photo when you get home...... HENCE the advice, right at the top....

Batteries, more batteries, SD cards and more SD cards!!!!!

Tipod? Fantastic devices.... but I am loath to lug one worth using up a mountain! Crickey, I'm loath to lugg one up a big hill!

D3200 has an ISO setting you can change frame by frame, unlike the ASA of a film, that goes up to something DAFT, like ISO 6400 plus an over-drive.... its like every film in the shop in days of old, plus a bit of push-processing!!!! But, in all but the dark, you shouldn't need to go anywhere near that high, and if you do.... well its dark, you'll be lucky to see anything to take a photo of anyway! That gives you plenty of headway to keep the shutter speed above hand holding.....

Traditional guide was to keep shutter over focal length of lens; if a zoom, the longest focal length of the range.... so on a traditional SLR and 50mm lens, you tried to keep it over 1/60th. If you has a 28-70 zoom, you would have been advised to try keep it over 1/70th... cameras didn't often have such graduation on the shutter speed, so 1/60th wouyld probably have been OK, but you may be more sure, keeping over 1/100th.....

On Digital.... this sort of goes out the window, as zooms with ever greater zoom range havd become the norm, and they have aquired image-stabilisation.... which is a bit of a chocolate tea-pot....

Remember, shutter over lens length was only ever a guide-line. With practice and care, and a little discipline to use a good stance, brace elbows and moderate breathing you could probably drop shutters two or three stops beneath 'guide'... and diung shutter-speed limbo with the D3200 and kit 18-55, with my daughter when she was doing GCSE photo, I can hand hold 'comfortably' down to maybe 1/8th, and not get camera shake streaks. Daughter with a little practice wasn't far off, perhaps 1/15th... more practice and she was getting that low hand holding a 135 portrait lens......

B-U-T... if you need go much lower than maybe 1/30th, theres likely bigger fish to fry than whether you need a tripod.... like whether you need come back when the suns in the sky!

Ramp the ISO, use the settings you got, you can get pictures, and THAT is the thing that matters.... back to top... you need electric in an electric picture maker to make pictures... so spare batteries! And, no good making pictures on the preview screen, if you want to take them home, you need space on the memory card!

Of ANYTHING... that is where I advice spending money...... nievely when I got the D3200, I got a big, 32Gb I think SD card for it... cos salesman said I needed one..... soon found that thers SD cards and theres SD cards and bigger isn't always better... more pertinant is the transfer speed, and even there there's some con with them quoting fastest read speeds not fastest write speeds that is actually important... didn't take long to suffer buffer lock-outs, for me to invest in smaller, faster 16Gb cards that were a lot more expensive than the original 32... but still compared to the rest incredibly cheap....

Then it is down to more discipline in keeping the clean; wiping them down after shooting, so not clog up the cards with photo's already archived, or get duplicates on the computer of photo's already archived when up-loading.

So back to batteries.... When I got the D3200 It came with two batteries in the kit, and a charger... to plug into UK mains three-pin socket....... batteries, compared to my old digi-compact that ate rechargeable AA's at an alarming rate, giving rise to me filling its belt pouch with spares, remembering the old 2-Ronnies joke about the man with the two-suit-cases asked the time, showing off his new digital-watch....... sorry, showing my age again..... but yeah, tiny digital camera... big bag of batteries for it! D3200 has lith-packs that do last pretty well... B-U-T, wander around with the camera always 'on' and the back-screen lit up, and give the thing a hard time hunting focus on the AF it does drain them, and it will drain one quite quick.... and unlike the Digio-Pact of old... cant just pick up a pack of alkalines at the news-agents!!!! Got to take it home, and pop it in the three-pin plug charger! NOT good if you are in a forreign country that has two pin sockets at a different voltage!

HINT: Get a Travel Charger, as well as spare batteries!

I bought one that came with two more battery-packs, that worked of 12v car cigarette socket, and had a travel-transformer to plug into forreign plug-sockets... Fantastic gizmo.... TBH I haven't crossed the English channel this century... so haven;t had cause to try out that 'feature', but it plugs into a car fag-lighter socket! And I have one of them on my motorbike, which was why I got it, for 'out and about' and weekends away; And car electrics tend to be pretty common, and available, where-ever you go.. so bases covered. Needn't be all that expensive either, I think that the charger and two batteries was actually as 'cheap' as one OEM Nikon battery on its own... And its small potatoes compared to the cost of the camera or other 'must-have' accessories like alternative lenses or tripods etc.... asnd camera dont take photo's if battery flat! So top of the list.

Side note on topic of remote releases, when using tripods. Again, have to say that I am sanguine at best... remember up the top of Gt Malvern, propping camera on a park bench with the self timer.... over the years I have done that sort of thing far more than I have ever lugged a tripod and cable release about..... The 'support' is the important thing, and there's not always a convenient impromptu support like a park bench or dry-stone-wall, or one pointing the right way. Usually 'something' though, and a bean bag to act as diractable rest, or a mini-pod is great here. D3200 is reletively light, and with a shorter lens like the 18-55 I have used a pretty cheap bendy gorrilla pod on mine and not had it bowing to me from it.... you DON'T really need a REALLY big heavy tripod... YES for sure, they ARE the most stable, YES they are the most reliable, YES they are the most versatile.... IF you dont need a ruddy helicopter you get them where needed!

And the self timer is fantastic. Landscapes tend not to bludger off whilst you wat for them to fore like maybe trains or people.... they also lock up the mirror before they count down to minimize any potential shake when they fire; standard feature of the camera, IF you didn't get the IR remote with it, do you REALLY need an extra accessory to lug about and faff with?

Which is all a LOT of words, to say you probably DONT need much if anything at all.... JUST a little common sense, and imagination... pictures are in the seeing, NOT the camera.. so go see. Apply common sense and a little improvisation where needed, and just make sure you have charged batteries and memory card space for what you SEE when you get there.

Remember the chap on Gt Malvern, lugging a big camera and even bigger camera bag up that hill... and that little XA2 compact.... which went round the world and back with me when I was at school and university, and took great photos along the way.... DONT make life complicated, dont make life hard, keep-it-simple-silly....and dont get bogged down in 'gear' whether looking at it, trying to buy it, or trying to lugg the ruddy stuff up big hills!

Last bit of advice? Remember you are on HOLIDAY! There's no law that says you HAVE to take photo's... don't let the camera take over and forget to enjoy yourself!

Have fun!!!!
 
I bought a Nikon D3300 last year, with the 18-55mm kit lens, and the very next week went on holiday to Snowdonia, the kit lens was perfect, pretty much all my shots were taken at the 18mm end and I didn't feel there was anything I was missing or holding me back, and the photos I took (all without really knowing what I was doing) were better than I'd ever hoped for.

Could you post a link or some of your best shots here? It would be great help.
 
^^^ Flippin' eck Mike. Good stuff I'm sure, but a bit 'War and Peace'.. ;)

It's obviously well intended but far too long for most people to read.

As to the question posted, I would also recommend a telephoto zoom lens for landscape photography which are well suited to mountain areas. You'd be able to zoom in on distant peaks, have a look at some of Scott Robertson's mountain pictures to show what can be done, he's on this forum and I'd say one of the best landscape photographers in the UK. A Nikon 55-300mm would do.
 
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