Out of pure whimsey I’ve decided on a project to capture a woodland view very near to where I live.

My plan is to take a picture of exactly the same scene each month of the year to create a montage or scrap book showing the changes in colour, leaf cover, cloud and so on. In my head, it will look magnificent!

However, I know almost nothing about photography, so the project is also intended to introduce me to taking ‘real’ pictures.

I’m looking to the STW hive mind to help start me off. So some early thoughts for comment / advice.

First, I reckon a DSLR is the go to technology for this, plus a tripod.

Second, budget of £100 for body and lens (tripod separate) should be sufficient.

I’ve been on the ‘bay and am overwhelmed by choice of cameras and lenses for round about this budget.

Can STW suggest what to look for at this price point, brands, cameras and suitable lenses?

To my uninitiated mind, this looks reasonable…

Typical eBay DSLR @ £100

Thoughts welcome on what I should look for to help kick off my plans.

Many thanks in advance!

That Nikon looks ok. I had a D40 for years which took great pictures. I have a D7100 now though.

There is a book called understanding exposure which I’d really recommend alongside your camera.

Thanks, I’ve ordered from Amazon. Will be just what I need.

I’m nothing but an enthusiastic amateur but here are my tips:

1. Create a sense of depth by using foreground interest; something to lead the eye into the image. To this end, be prepared to shoot using small apertures (tripod required) for maximum depth of field (ensuring both the foreground and the background are in focus)

2. Learn the Rule of Thirds. Use it, and experiment with breaking it.

3. Woodland can pose lighting challenges, with extremes of bright and dark in the same image. Acquaint yourself with the bracketing function on your new camera.

4. The best light can often be had at the beginning and the end of the day. Get out early for best results.

5. Put your photos online somewhere (Flickr?) then link to them here so we can all see them 🙂

6. GIMP is a good Happy-Shopper Photoshop, and it’s free. There are probably others.

Enjoy!

Although a DSLR will give you all the controls you need, a good compact can do this too, Canon G series, Nikon P7700, and similar.

4. The best light can often be had at the beginning and the end of the day. Get out early for best results.

Try to take your photo each time when the sun is roughly in the same direction, or at the same height in the sky. This will give a continuity for the way the shadows look.

This website can calculate the azimuth (bearing from North) and elevation (sometimes called altitude) for you…
NOAA link
There’re apps for this too if you’re that way inclined.

Canon man myself. I’m guessing you could get something like a 400/450d for that price. Or maybe even a 30/40d.

Currently using a 30d myself, and it’s a capable camera. Not too long ago it was semi-professional kit. There’s a lot more technology in newer cameras. Higher ISOs for the ability to shoot in darker conditions, video, higher resolutions and stuff like that. But nothing wrong with getting an older camera.

Lenses are more important, and the stock lenses are not always the best, but again, they are capable.

I’d say just get one and go out and practice before you start. Play around with some photo editing software too, as that can be a big part of modern photography.

You could potentially go for a prime lens (no zoom) if you’re planning on taking the same image. These generally give better image quality than a zoom, at least for something of equivalent cost, but it would be very difficult to know what you need/want in the first place without actually using them.

Great idea. Definitely want to practice before starting the project as you don’t want to find 3 months in the first pictures could have been better. Maybe a bit of flex with dates of photo so that you can get a day with best light or colours. O the shadows (good point) maybe experiment with one set where shadows are similar and maybe one where they are lenthening or shortening somewhat between each shot then montage shows them creeping/moving ?

I’ve got a Canon 400d. The 300d and 350d are just slightly lower resolution versions. All are quite cheap now and will almost certainly come with the standard 18-55mm kit lens, ok but not great. It’s a good basic camera, I’m sure really keen users would find its limitations but it allows me to fiddle as much as I want to.

My favourite lens is the Canon 50mm 1.8f, it is a prime lens so no zoom but the colours are fantastic and it’s very cheap, so cheap I actually bought one brand new! The low f stop can be fun as well.

My boss has a high end Nikon, I forget what model, with a wobbly bottom end Tamron lens on it and it’s awful. It’s a waste.

My favourite lens is the Canon 50mm 1.8f, it is a prime lens so no zoom but the colours are fantastic and it’s very cheap

Just bought one of these 2nd hand to experiment with (only bought my first DSLR a few months ago) and results are awesome! Requires you to be very creative to get the images you want, as you can’t just zoom in on the subject, but image quality is definitely a step up from both the kit lens and the Sigma 70-300 I got with the camera. Only paid £50 2nd hand for the lens too!

Thanks to the STW Massive for all the help.

The timing and shadows point is not something I’d yet considered, so will definitely work on making sure the shadows are consistent.

Also appreciate the thoughts on a prime lens. TBH this should suit my needs as I don’t need a zoom for what I would like to achieve.

Thanks again for all the help.

You’re definitely on the right track. I still use Canon’s ‘nifty fifty’ and it is a great lens for the price. Just remember that it becomes a short telephoto if used with an apsc sensor (typically found on the cameras you are mentioning) – which is around 80mm in full frame terms.

It’s great for head/shoulder portraits and creative tightly composed studies with decent isolation/bokeh – yet not ideal for landscapes. I wouldn’t worry though, just choose a location with enough of interest in composed in the frame (maybe a path leading off into a distant hill scene) then it will be awesome. Great project btw – look fwd to seeing it if you share it 🙂

PS +1 what hebden said. Would be great to locate/register yr tripod with ground markers then can line up the sme for each exposure. That way if you later use the stills to make a time-lapse animation it will be spot-on.

The Canon 17-85mm EFS is also a lovely lens. I bought a used one for my better half a couple of Christmas’ ago.

Problem is they are not reliable. There’s a ribbon cable in them which fails, this one went after a couple of months. Fortunately I got it from a shop who put a 6 month warranty on it so they repaired it FOC. A year later it has the same symptoms, I’ll do it myself this time.

Great lens but be careful if you happen to look at one to buy.

Nice work Capt.

Pick a spot where bluebells will grow in spring!

Before you go buying a prime lens, remember that a 50mm lens is only a “standard lens” on a camera with a full-frame sensor. I can’t work out from your post what camera you bought, but if it’s a budget SLR it will probably have an APS-C sized sensor, which will [it’s a bit more complicated than this but] make a 50mm a short telephoto lens. Which would be good for studio portraiture but the wrong choice for most landscape photography.

For landscape photography, you will probably not need wide maximum aperture a prime lens offers, plus you’d be depriving yourself of a wide-angle range which most landscape photographers consider essential.

My advice would be to start with a standard zoom lens (18-55mm or whatever), the same brand as your camera. They’re not expensive, they are flexible, and they are perfectly good for hobby photographers, regardless of what Hasselblad-fondling-camera-club-snobs say. I have sold several photographs taken with a Canon 400D and the kit zoom lens.

If at some point in the future you find you just can’t live without a set of prime lenses, then you can go for it then.

CaptJohn, you appear to have set the bar quite high…

Fantastic work!

There’s plenty of advice here, so many thanks all.

I’ll settle down with my book, camera and tripod and report back with some results.

Thanks again.

The Nikon D3000 is a crappy camera no way I would pay £100 for one, I’d actually prefer the older D40, or much prefer a D3100. Take some time to find a good deal, I let sold a D80 with a 50mm f1.8, a 70-300mm lens and a nice camera bag and some other bits go for £120 for example.

For the type of photography you are looking at I would recommend you look for the larger cameras, e.g. D80/D90, because the controls handle much better plus can be used with older cheap lenses.

You may be better off using the standard zoom lens, for landscapes you usually set the aperture quite small and basic 18-55mm zoom lens is quite good for this. Prime lenses are sharper but the problem is there are no cheap wide angle primes that sell for less than £100.

Wide/normal lenses I have experience with.

Nikon 18-55mm kit zoom fairly sharp at F8 but I hardly used this lens as it didn’t have the fast aperture I needed for action or portrait shots.
Samyang 10mm f2.8. Insanely wide on crop body, very sharp but some fisheye distorion, manual focus only £200 new
Samyang 14mm F2.8 Insanely wide on full frame, very sharp but some distortion, manual focus only £200 new
Sigma 20mm F1.8* Good for interesting close up but landscapes had lack of sharpness and contrast. £160 2nd hand
Sigma 28mm F1.8* Similar to the 20mm but slightly sharper £150ish 2nd hand
Nikon 35mm F1.8G Quick focusing and very sharp. Eyesight field of view on a crop body £120
Nikon 50mm F1.8D* Great cheap prime lens, very sharp, bokeh has strong fringe
£60 2nd hand
Nikon 50mm F1.4G* as above but better bokeh and slightly larger aperture £300ish

*All these lenses will only autofocus on the larger cameras (D80/D90/D7000) that have a focus motor on the body and not the smaller ones (D40/D3000/D5000).

I did something similar last year, inspired by a One Photo A Week challenge on Flickr. The hardest problem for me wasn’t technical it was simply remembering to take one photo each week. I chose to take them on weekends generally as in the winter it was dark when I wasn’t at work. Being on holiday caused a few missed photos, but if the OP is only going for one photo a month then that’s not such a big problem. I lost interest at one point so I still have some photos somewhere to upload from the end of the year, but here is the result if anyone is interested…

One Photo A Week Project

[url=https://flic.kr/p/rg33BE]OPAW1[/url] by Beanum, on Flickr

I should have said, the picture i posted isn’t mine!