Just avoid pointing your camera at the sun, and if you find yourself pointing that way, stop it :) This is more for your eyes than the camera, as I for one sometimes peer over the top of my camera to try and get it back on track. For that matter, shots broadly in the direction of the sun are likely to have a lot of shadow - the better shots will be away from the sun

As for heat - just being aware of the issue is a good start, so you think about where you leave your camera in your room, test the lens temperature by hand occasionally, etc. But a pale rather than black camera bag might be a good idea.

If there’s any Vietnamese camera clubs you know of, it might well be worth getting in contact - they will be able to give you far sounder advice.

Need more decent sunlight in the UK

Ah, you’re not after bird photos, so ignore my comments on lens lengths (even so, I’m sure there will be birds, and probably still interesting to see in detail - the UK has many small often-common brown birds, and most are really pretty plumage close up when you look - for that matter, I’ve even photos of crows that I think interesting).

You mention macro shots - do you mean of insects, flowers and the like? Good macro shots again tend to depend on the lens, and some lenses are much better than others. You’re looking for maximum magnification in the specification, and you might be surprised how poor that seems even for an expensive lens. It might only be x0.5 and still be “good” (even if by some definitions that’s not even “macro”). Even the top end Canon RF 100mm F2.8 is only x1.4! As a great bonus, macro lenses should also work as normal lens, usually really rather well.

I’ve not tried the R50, so can’t comment - though these days I use higher end Canon cameras and like them. Other people dislike them, especially due to their policies on their best lens mounts that mean third parties like Sigma couldn’t produce lenses for them.

While I really wouldn’t try pointing a camera at the sun without heavy filters, it’s probably not instant destruction, and through a mirror-less view finder it won’t directly blind you (DSLR view-finders might!). A significant issue is that your lenses and camera bodies will likely have a fair proportion of black plastic that will heat up fast in the sun, and then transfer that warmth to where you really don’t want it in a camera - especially during heavy use when the camera will be internally heating up as well.

For that price point, if second-hand is not an option (which I guess is what you mean by “Not open to refurbished”), you are going to be challenged to get something “good”. But…

First, do check to see if any high end smart phones can meet your needs - they probably won’t have the “reach” to get distant birds, but will be far more convenient for travelling.

Next, you should probably be looking at crop-frame cameras - lighter, cheaper, and because of their nature, their lenses have a longer reach for their technical length. There are downsides (e.g. low-light capabilities), but a reasonable trade-off in your case.

If new, you’d likely be only offered mirror-less cameras (rather than DSLR) because that’s the way the suppliers are going. Probably to your benefit (even if more power hungry), but second-hand DSLRs can be cheap, and some adore them.

I’m not sure what happens at your budget, but with a bigger budget a suitable lens is likely to be the same price as the camera body: so don’t look at lenses as accessories, but as a significant part of the package.

If you are after birds, on a crop-frame camera, a good focal length would be 400mm, but you may have to settle for less (and even 200mm might be pleasing).

You are travelling, so likely don’t want lots of separate lenses, so you might want a zoom lens to get a range of focal lengths in one item. That said, you might want something around the 35mm length for "tourist shots - two lenses also means if one gets damaged, you aren’t carrying round entirely dead weight.

As to other accessories: proper lens cleaning kit, lens hood (more to protect the lens than to stop flare), and a camera bag suitable for the conditions. Spare memory cards, batteries, etc. Work out a way of getting pictures off your camera and somewhere safe while you travel, as another form of de-risking.

I imagine Vietnam as wet and warm - neither of these is great for cameras, and you may want to seek advice on that.

Get in as much practice with your camera as you can before you set off on your travels. Take photos comparable to what you hope to take later, but locally - garden birds, a local town park, whatever. You will likely still make mistakes for years to come, but many more in the first few weeks.

And most of all, take care but have fun!

Though the Red Kite has a clear edge in appearance, especially in decent sunshine, do look for the UK Buzzard, which looks magnificent in just chocolate brown and cream.

Bonus - same kite, launching itself into the sky

Well, I think I like that more than the original one, so if it was me, I’d count the post-processing as a win. There might be settings that are marginally better, but you could spend a lot of time for little gain (judging which picture is overall better when you’ve only moved “one notch” is really hard).

Yes, for bird photography, where I want “truth” as well as “beauty”, I’d share your suspicion of masks - playing with the histogram is doing little more than saying “I know better than the camera does how to globally assign brightness” which strikes me as entirely proper.

So, here I would say the background is about the right exposure, so a global change in brightness probably won’t be right.

Have you tried what Canon DPP calls Gamma Adjustment, or what I think of as “the Histogram Tool”? This is still a global change, but with finer control. It may also present as a “leaning/squashed S curve” What I would first try is:

Use your settings to highlight over (and under!) exposed areas as you work.

The rightmost slider probably controls the brighter end of the histogram - try moving it further right so that it is past the histogram and in the flat area. I don’t think it would hold with this photo, but if you had a lot of white/bright sky, move the slider so that your subject is not over exposed, and accept over exposed sky. You should then see that your subject is no longer over-exposed, yet the rest of the photo is not much changed. If, as in this case, there’s only a small over exposed area, you may need to send the slider even further to the right as the subject doesn’t really show up in the histogram.

Sometimes if you do this, you get an unwelcome colour cast to the previously over-exposed areas. This is a hint this is not going to be a success!

If however the above has had a positive effect, you may have thrown off the rest of the photo. Try moving the central slider left and right - to the right deals with “washed out”, to the left deals with “too much in shadow”. Choose the position that most appeals to you - perhaps zoomed in on the subject.

For completeness, move the leftmost slider to where the histogram goes flat (or possibly further to the right if there’s background shadows you don’t care about).

As you play with the tool (assuming some parallel is present at all) you will realise:

1. You can roughly mimic a global brightness increase of one stop by moving each slider (left, centre, right) one stop to the left.
2. Any “Shadows” and “Highlights” (and perhaps others) sliders are doing variations on the above theme as well.

Your histogram tool may even allow more refined tweaks of the histogram (especially if its the curve type). Probably not facilities you need.

People who are good at post processing (not me!) will play with masks to keep these sort of effects to just the subject.

It may be worth getting to understand what the underlying logic of all this is. very loosely - RAW counts photons per pixel. To convert this to an image, the pixel count is assigned to a bucket of a particular display brightness (0-255 or whatever) that is associated with a range of pixel counts. The leftmost bucket is “0 to m” photons and black, the rightmost bucket is “n and above” photons and white, and the buckets in between are the greys. The histogram tool is altering the range of pixel counts for each bucket and recalculating the bucket for each pixel. Obviously, extrapolate this nonsense to RGB! A JPG already has chosen the buckets for each pixel, and lost the photon count, meaning there’s a lot less info to work with.

(One day I’ll save a copy of “Kevin’s Histogram Approach” and tweak it for posts like this!)

Nice photo because of the unusual pose + reflection + framing anyway, but a good example of why RAW format is so useful - I’m pretty sure you’d be able to recover the over-exposed areas with the info in a RAW format version (experience suggests at least one stops worth of recovery should be available).

Ah, sorry, been away over Christmas.

This is probably too late, but a major requirement for me is to be able to swap modes while I continue to look through the view finder to track the thing I want to photo (if with a bit of built up muscle memory). For me, this is achieved by a button that puts me in focus mode change mode, and another than cycles through the modes, both close to the shutter button, and easy to find by touch. That is, if you can only change mode through a menu structure, that would not work for me.

The other advice looks good, but just a word on Autofocus, especially for wildlife. I’ve not tried any of the eyeball tracking cameras, but if it’s not that, it is just going to be “Closest distinct object”, unless (ironically) it recognises an eyeball or face and clicks to that. “Closest Object” is fine for portraits, etc. but for poorly lit wildlife with undergrowth around it will really struggle: you will forever be focusing on fascinating sticks and leaves. I’m therefore often switching from Autofocus to “Focus on this point” and hoping hand shake won’t put me off target. Occasionally, even resorting to manual focus.

Eyeballs on wildlife in poor light or in cover are, unsurprisingly, hard for cameras to spot.

It will also struggle in poorer light - relatively distant flying birds against a cloudy sky for instance, can leave my Canon R6 searching wildly for a viable focal distance for anything, for all to my eyes it’s “obvious” there’s only one thing worth focusing on. This is the “distinct object” part.

In some ways, the above problems are due to “proper” cameras having a shorter depth of field (but better quality in that field) compared to smart phones, so getting the focus “good enough” is more of a challenge.

That is all to say, Autofocus is nice when it works, but it won’t always work regardless of camera, so still pay attention to the ease of other focusing modes.

Oh yes, but the other sites are a lot further away from Reading, and you can see Kites through South Oxfordshire. Indeed, the map at that link gives a pretty good sense of “Where did my Kite (or its parents) probably come from?”

Perhaps a Golden-crowned Kinglet - you could try posting the photo to the !birding community for confirmation (but then you might be exposed to my bird photos).

Yes, all it needed was for people to stop persecuting them, and they’ve come roaring back. I’d guess at least a dozen in West Reading (as in I’m seen half that many at once), and probably more like three times that. They presumably spread down from the Chilterns release site.

No, no, I just can’t upvote someone calling me a liar…

If that was taken in the UK, it would be a Firecrest, and would invoke jealousy from the likes of myself.

If taken in the US, some sort of Kinglet, and I know nothing about their rarity there.

“Telephoto” has varying meanings from a technical (focal length is longer than actual length) to a “it’s long”, so can be rather meaningless in advertising copy.

Low-light handling is as much to do with the body of the camera as the lens - the lens just gathers light, its the body and its sensor that offers the sensitivity (and you may find mirrorless cameras better at that).

A low-ish aperture number, such as F4, will certainly help in low light but will also add to price and weight by quite a bit (F4 on a 800mm can lead to a silly price!). So, keep it as low as your budget allows for the focal length you want.

The focal length will depend on whether full-body sensor or a crop sensor - if the latter, then 400mm might well be ideal, but for the former, for wildlife such as birds, I’d suggest more like 600mm if you can. If its the local badgers, that’s different.

You might also want to consider zoom - adds to the cost, but adds to options.

Background: I had a lot of pleasure with a Canon R6 + F11 RF600mm (which is something of a budget lens) taking wildlife shots, and often in poorer light (up to ISO2000 or so gets OK shots, and can go much higher for “ID” shots) - I’ve upgraded to a much better (heavier, more expensive…) lens, but that’s outside your budget. The Canon R6 was always billed as good in low light - ironically for having fewer pixels (there’s a trade off).

Given you don’t want RF lens, I’d strongly recommend looking at 2nd hand Canon (or Sigma!) lenses from a reputable source - ideally a competent local camera shop offering a years guarantee on the lens or the like. Don’t just buy from Ebay!!! Many camera enthusiasts have moved to mirrorless (for good reasons, though DSLR still has one or two reasons to use), and Canon therefore cater far more for that market - which means smaller range of new lens, and lots of 2nd hand lens on the market as using EF-RF adapters sucks.

You’ve been posting some pleasant photos today, but this one is suffering a bit from depth of field issues on the cone. Having the pine needles in soft focus is fine, but the cone probably ought to be sharp end to end. Perhaps up the aperture (higher F number), shoot from further away and crop, or shoot more from the side.

Yay!