Your comprehensive nature photography gear guide – what do you need to get started?

A full-frame or crop sensor DSLR or mirrorless camera – This is the most essential part of your kit. You can’t expect to take great photographs of nature with an iPhone or a “point-and-shoot” camera. You need a DSLR or mirrorless camera with either a full-frame or crop sensor. These cameras have high-quality sensors, adjustable features, and powerful lenses that allow you to take your photography to the next level.

In fact, if you are a true minimalist, it could be said that a high-quality camera is all you really need to start taking nature photographs – but I think the other items on this list are also very important, so I would recommend that you invest in them, too.

Crop sensor cameras – which have a smaller sensor than comparable full frame camera – are a perfectly good choice for a beginner photographer. They’re inexpensive and offer great results, despite the popular belief.

You don’t need to break the bank here, either. These days, you can get a great crop sensor DSLR for less than $1000 – and often closer to $500. A camera in this budget range is perfect for a beginner. You don’t necessarily need to drop $3,000 on a professional-grade camera right away.

Tripod – A tripod is essential if you’re taking landscape photos, time-lapses, and shooting in low-light conditions, just to name a few situations. It will keep your camera steady when you’re shooting rapid movements and longer exposures, providing you with more tools to express your artistic creativity. A good tripod will be easy to adjust – even in inclement weather – and offer stable, strong support. You generally want your tripod lightweight, as you’ll have to lug the tripod around in your gear bag.

A polarizing filter – If you only buy only one filter, make it a polarized filter. These filters can help eliminate glare, darken the sky, reduce reflections in the water, and protect your camera sensor from the sun’s UV rays.

Photo Storage (memory) – You can’t take photos without a way to store them. So make sure that you have an adequately-sized memory card that has a fast enough write speed for taking photographs. Pick a card that’s at least 32GB – that’s enough to store about 1,000 typical shots in .RAW format.

A camera bag – You won’t want to have your camera and gear knocking around in a backpack while you hike. Camera bags are padded and have special slots for your camera, and gear like lenses, filters, batteries and more. A good-quality camera-bag is a must-have – both for your convenience, and the safety of your gear.

Don’t buy the expensive bag right off the bat – most of the options do provide good protection, but higher-priced ones often have the bells and whistles that not a lot of people really need. As long as you don’t intend to abuse your camera bag, you can get away with bags under $100.

Maintenance tools – At the very least, you should have a camera cleaning kit with lens spray, brushes, and a microfiber cloth to clean your camera, lenses, filters, and gear after you return from the field.

Failure to clean your gear once in a while can – and eventually will – cost you in the long term. Gear that hasn’t been maintained properly will wear down more quickly and could break down or become damaged. It will also be worth less on the used gear market, so you’ll get less money back if you decide to sell your gear and upgrade.

Additional lenses – Contrary to what you may think, you don’t have to rush out and drop thousands of dollars on a wide-angle lens, a telephoto lens or macro lens. If you’re a beginner, you can get fantastic shots with just the kit lens that came with your camera.

However, once you get more experience, adding more lenses to your gear bag can help in specific situations – like taking wide-angle landscapes and close-up shots of animals.

Still, if you’re a beginner, I recommend just experimenting with your kit lens for a little while – you don’t need to go get a bunch of expensive new lenses right away.

Neutral-density filters – Neutral-density (ND) filters can help you reduce the light that enters your camera sensor. This makes them useful for long exposures, achieving motion blur with longer shutter speeds, and using a wider aperture.

However, if you’re a beginner, they are not expressly necessary. As you gain experience and learn how to use your camera, you can start adding them to your bag – but you don’t need to pick up an ND filter kit right away.

Extra batteries – Extra batteries are nice to have, but not totally essential. Your camera’s battery will usually last about 3 hours – and if you’re starting out in the world of nature photography, this should be plenty of time. However, additional batteries are usually quite inexpensive – so picking up at least one backup battery is not a bad idea, even if you’re a beginner.

Miscellaneous accessories – Accessories like lens hoods, shutter releases, and rain covers are not expressly necessary for beginners – though they can help you shoot in a wider variety of conditions.