Best camera for bears - beginner needs advice

[Designer]

Your best bet with your compact camera is to carry some bear bait to toss out the bus window. When the bears stand up to reach into the bus, get your shot and move quickly to the other side of the bus.

You cant be friggin serious.

(joking of course)

And... yes... I apparently had to write it. Just in case, you know?

 

[daniel1948]

The problem with the concept of 5X or 15X is it is meaningless with out understanding the focal lengths involved. A 1mm to 50mm is a 50X zoom and a 1mm to 100mm lens it a 100X zoom. That is why I detest the X's concept, it is virtually meaningless unless you understand focal length. To know what you need you need to know how far away they will likely be from you.

Thank you. This is the kind of information I need! In the back of my mind I know about focal length, but I never connected it with cameras. (As I said, I'm not a photographer, just a guy who likes to snap some pictures of the places I go and the things I see.)

So I did some reading on line about focal length. The SX 410 I mentioned in my first post has a range from 24 mm to 960 mm. And it gets very good reviews on Amazon (probably from casual, not serious photographers, given its low price). My little camera goes from 24 mm to 120 mm, so the 410 will go considerably farther.

As for all the comments about guns, those people seem to still think that I'll be walking around among the bears with a chunk of seal blubber tied around my neck. One does not do that unless one is tired of life. In Churchill there are sirens to warn if a bear has come into town, and the bear is trapped and put in the bear jail until the ice forms and it is transported out onto the ice, and outside of town we are never outside of the vehicle or the lodge, both of which are inaccessible to the bears. The windows and viewing platforms are so high up the bears cannot reach them. We are much safer there than I will be driving from my house to the airport.

BTW, the bears often come right up to the buggy or lodge and sit, looking up at the windows for a considerably time, making for good photo opportunities. I have a hypothesis about this: They think the windows are like holes in the ice. They hunt by waiting by an air hole for a seal to come up for air. I think they sit under the windows waiting for one of us to come out, like a seal coming up for air. Fortunately, we have enough air inside the buggy and don't need to go out where the bear is in order to breathe.

Bears are super-cool, beautiful animals. Bear attacks are so rare that when they happen they're national news for a week, and they usually involve people who went into deep wilderness alone, or were engaged in extreme activities or just not paying attention. And even then your chances of being attacked by a bear are vanishingly small. Meanwhile, if the news reported all traffic fatalities there'd be no room to cover anything else. You're safer on a well-run bear-viewing trip to Churchill than you are at home in bed. The drive to the airport: that's the dangerous part.

 

[gsgary]

If you are specifically wanting photos of polar bears then you either need one of theses or stop by the gift shop and buy some post cards. They are not critters to play with & $400 is not going to get you the kind of reach you need.
Photographer Michio Hoshino Killed by Bear


For bears you want a minimum of 400mm (I wouldn't use it for Grizzly or Polar bears) and more like 600 to 800mm focal length. You might look at something like this. Nikon COOLPIX P530 Digital Camera (Black) 26464 B&H Photo Video
This might be a better choice, but out of your price range. Nikon COOLPIX P900 Digital Camera 26499 B&H Photo Video

If you need range then these are what to look at. Point and Shoot Cameras, Compact Digital Cameras - B&H

Rubbish a fisheye lens would be perfect

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[table1349]

The problem with the concept of 5X or 15X is it is meaningless with out understanding the focal lengths involved. A 1mm to 50mm is a 50X zoom and a 1mm to 100mm lens it a 100X zoom. That is why I detest the X's concept, it is virtually meaningless unless you understand focal length. To know what you need you need to know how far away they will likely be from you.

Thank you. This is the kind of information I need! In the back of my mind I know about focal length, but I never connected it with cameras. (As I said, I'm not a photographer, just a guy who likes to snap some pictures of the places I go and the things I see.)

So I did some reading on line about focal length. The SX 410 I mentioned in my first post has a range from 24 mm to 960 mm. And it gets very good reviews on Amazon (probably from casual, not serious photographers, given its low price). My little camera goes from 24 mm to 120 mm, so the 410 will go considerably farther.

As for all the comments about guns, those people seem to still think that I'll be walking around among the bears with a chunk of seal blubber tied around my neck. One does not do that unless one is tired of life. In Churchill there are sirens to warn if a bear has come into town, and the bear is trapped and put in the bear jail until the ice forms and it is transported out onto the ice, and outside of town we are never outside of the vehicle or the lodge, both of which are inaccessible to the bears. The windows and viewing platforms are so high up the bears cannot reach them. We are much safer there than I will be driving from my house to the airport.

BTW, the bears often come right up to the buggy or lodge and sit, looking up at the window for a considerably time, making for good photo opportunities. I have a hypothesis about this: They think the windows are like holes in the ice. They hunt by waiting by an air hole for a seal to come up for air. I think they sit under the windows waiting for one of us to come out, like a seal coming up for air. Fortunately, we have enough air inside the buggy and don't need to go out where the bear is in order to breathe.

Bears are super-cool, beautiful animals. Bear attacks are so rare that when they happen they're national news for a week, and they usually involve people who went into deep wilderness alone, or were engaged in extreme activities or just not paying attention. And even then your chances of being attacked by a bear are vanishingly small. Meanwhile, if the news reported all traffic fatalities there'd be no room to cover anything else. You're safer on a well-run bear-viewing trip to Churchill than you are at home in bed. The drive to the airport: that's the dangerous part.

While in general you are correct. Keep in mind though that the sows gave birth to cubs back in November/December. They are coming out with their cubs now to feed after a long winter. Hungry sows are dangerous. Hungry sows with cubs are very dangerous. Bears are large and strong and have been known to rip open car doors. For me prevention is worth a pound of cure.

 

[daniel1948]

I won't be in a car. I'll be in a specially-designed tundra buggy that's intended for driving out on the tundra among the polar bears, and operated by an outfit that's been doing this for years. The operators are professionals who know what they are doing.

From my first trip there, this is one of the tundra buggies, seen from the other. And a bear:

This is the tundra lodge, where we stayed:

Transferring from the lodge to the buggy we never set foot on the ground.

A couple of bear pictures, taken with my little camera:

This is a shot where more magnification would have been nice. The guys with the long lenses got amazing pictures of this mom and cubs:

And the guys with the long lenses got some really gorgeous pictures of a mom and cubs that were too far away for me to even try to capture. One of them gave me some of those, but I don't think I have permission to post them. One really cute one with the cubs hiding behind the mom, and another of them nursing.

Below: And just for kicks, a brown bear, same little camera, Alaska, June 2015. For this one a dozen or so of us with two guides were sitting on little folding stools in the meadow, as the bear ambled right up to us, until the guide stood up and shoed it away because he felt it was too close for comfort. The bears in Katmai, Alaska, have so much food that they are not a threat, as long as you're in a group, and the guide knows what he's doing. This guide has been doing this for 25 years and none of his guests has ever been eaten, though we visited one of the the actual camp sites of Timothy Treadwell, the guy who spent 13 summers among the bears of Katmai until one ate him. I'm really bad at judging distances, but I'm going to say this bear was about 20 feet from us when I snapped this picture, just before the guide shoed it away:

Edit: The polar bear pictures might have been taken with the camera before my present one. I don't remember for sure. That was another Cannon PowerShot, but without image stabilization. I don't remember exactly when I got the present one.

 

[gsgary]

This really winds me up these beautiful animals should be left alone to live their lives in peace

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[KC1]

This really winds me up these beautiful animals should be left alone to live their lives in peace

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We all should.

 

[daniel1948]

If you really want the animals to thrive, stop the destruction of their environment, not ecologically-responsible low-impact tourism. In Katmai, where we sat in the meadows and waited for the bears to come up and have a look at us so that we could have a look at them, commercial fishing boats are taking the salmon the bears need for survival, before the fish can reach the streams. In Churchill, where we drove out onto the tundra and then parked so the bears could come up to the tundra buggy, or folks with telephoto lenses could photograph them from a distance, as well as other polar bear habitats, global warming is shortening the length of time there is ice on the ocean, which the bears need for survival.

The impact of eco-tourism on the animals is minimal, and helps to educate people about the ecological disaster that human economic activity is wreaking upon this green planet. If you are concerned about the animals, you should be speaking out against uncontrolled fishing and the use of fossil fuels, not eco-tourism. And FWIW, I've never participated in any activity that approached wild animals. Only activities that allow the animals to approach us, if they wanted to, or to stay away from us if they wanted to do that. Lots of animals find us as fascinating as we find them.

 

[Overread]

This really winds me up these beautiful animals should be left alone to live their lives in peace

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And yet at the same time eco-tourism is a means to which wild animals can generate revenue which in turn puts a monetary value on them and the land they live in. It's one of the cornerstones of some conservation movements in trying to get local people to accept wildlife rather than focus on removal and using the land for other "productive" enterprises.

Although I would agree that when you've got 40 jeeps all around 1 lion its getting a bit silly. But in general a lot of animals get used to vehicles - heck cheetah are well renowned to using jeeps on safari as lookout-posts an thus will jump right up ontop of them for a vantage point.

 

[daniel1948]

Resources need to be managed. Some places in Africa do a poor job of balancing the numbers of people and vehicles allowed in the game parks. In Churchill we only rarely saw another tundra buggy. The few that are operating are very spread out.

 

[Overread]

Aye there must be a balance; I suspect that the tundra and nature of the beasts in question made it more expensive to setup and thus you get less competition. Whilst in Africa you just need a half capable jeep and a logo on the side and you're away (ok I'm sure its a bit more than that but still reduced costs thus more startup companies).

There's also way more pressure on Africa in particular - years of "Big 5 in Africa" marketing has made it a hotspot.

 

[daniel1948]

Another issue in Africa is the poverty: The driver/guides depend on tips, and the closer they get the client to the animals, especially the big animals, the more generous will be the tips. So there is great incentive to drive off-trail and to pester or crowd the animals. There are laws against this sort of behavior, but little money for enforcement.

By Contrast, Canada is a first-world country that's better able to enforce good practices, both through monitoring and through real concern for the animals on the part of the operators and the clients. It is indeed expensive to operate polar-bear-viewing tours. The tundra buggies (see the picture above) are enormous and expensive vehicles, and they only get used for a few weeks out of the year. This also makes it expensive to go on the tours. They can afford to pay their drivers and guides enough that they can hire people who are genuinely concerned for the welfare of the bears, and this concern shows throughout the tour.

 

[katsrevenge]

What about a long lens camera? I have a P600 that takes great photos. Not as good as a DSLR.. but far less expensive than a good long lens!

Got mine used on Ebay.
Edit. I took this with it. Should be OK for white bears, LOL!

latesummer2015 by Kat M., on Flickr

 

[daniel1948]

I looked up the P600. The review said it's amazingly clear and sharp at the extreme end of its telephoto lens, but the trade-off is barrel distortion at the wide-angle end. The specs said it goes to 1440 mm (35-mm equivalent). Cannon's biggest telephoto lens is "only" 500 mm. Which makes me wonder if 1440 (equivalent) is really all that useful. Of course, I don't know what changes when we're talking about the digital camera "equivalent" of a 35-mm camera lens length.

 

[Designer]

I have a P600 that takes great photos.

No offense intended, but that is not a very good photograph. I couldn't say how your camera would do on bears, but this shot of the moon is very soft over much of the frame and very noisy.