Hello all… I have been wanting to get into taking better pictures of manuls ( and all the animals at the zoo ) because my phone camera isn’t cutting it anymore. I was wondering what cameras and what lenses people use as I only have knowledge on cameras when it comes to landscape photography and absolutely no clue with wildlife.
I saw a manul photography guide on twitter and I would like to follow it but I will need a camera first, so, does anyone have any recommendations or advice on this?
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Hi,
I was thinking about writing a guide about manul photography 
May I see the guide you found on twitter?
About the gear we use: we use Canon cameras. We started with R6 - which is a great camera I must say, and then we bought R5 and now film with 2 cameras. Regarding lenses… I tried some Canon telephoto lenses but not many. 70-300 IS USM v2 I liked the most. Also we use 100-500 L lens. I tried 70-200 different versions but reach is not enough 
We use several other lenses for specific cases like 24-105 F4 L and 16 2.8 RF and so on…
IMO brand doesn’t matter much. Most modern prosumer cameras deliver great photos and good videos.
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This is the twitter guide I saw. I’ve not fully looked through it yet however it seems useful. https://x.com/pas_manul/status/1900327765553152270?t=X2N2BKKqKPqk5DTkV9e5EQ&s=19
Thank you for the camera and lens information… I will look into those
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This is such a great question – I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can get better manul photos too.
I use a Sony a6100 with the 55-210mm F4.5-6.3 kit lens – it’s an old version of the a6700 camera that the photographer in that guide uses. I’ve found that more recent versions of the camera don’t add anything useful for photographing manuls: most upgrades seem to be in shooting video, which I don’t do. So the cheaper, older version of the camera seemed like a good place to start.
The 55-210mm lens gives me an effective crop of 315mm, and even though the aperture might look slow, zoos are only open in the daytime so it’s not difficult to get enough light!
The photos that I’ve uploaded to this site were all shot in raw, then I did some minor edits in Darktable (free software).
In all, this setup gives me decent photos at a reasonable price. If I were going to upgrade, I think I would need to spend quite a lot of money to find improvements: I could go for a full-frame body or get a better telephoto lens… But probably the best way for me to improve at the moment is to just take more photos, learn to focus faster when I have to go manual, and spend more time around manuls!
I also take some 35mm film photos on analogue cameras. I prefer the reliability of my mirrorless camera, but I do want to improve my film photography.
Looking at the guide you linked, I like their advice to use a lens hood and get as close to the barrier as possible, to minimise reflections. A few of my photos from Banham last year were unusable because of reflections from the glass barrier, and that really disappointed me. I hadn’t considered using a polarised filter either, so I might give that a try.
I’m very interested to know what everyone else is doing in their manul photography 
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One small thing I’d like to add.
The lens matters much more than the body.
When picking a body just check what lenses you can use with it. I’d buy a body which supports pro-lenses. For canon it’s rf and ef mounts.
The trick is that usually there are lot of lenses on the market for these mounts. You can find a really great lens which won’t cost a fortune. Also you can buy pro lenses second handed.
Even under 300 usd you can find a lens which will deliver really high quality shots easily. Of course it won’t be fast/waterproofed/etc, but photos will be really good
Later if you feel that you are into it you can buy more expensive lens and so on.
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