Video & Photography

Mirrorless bodies, camcorders, binoculars and gate cameras:

they solve different problems, and the first decision is which one is yours. Photo cameras hold the mirrorless bodies from Canon, Sony, Nikon and Fujifilm, the DSLRs they are replacing and the lenses that fit both. Moving pictures sit under film cameras: camcorders, a GoPro or DJI action camera strapped to a surfboard, and cinema bodies built for long takes. Binoculars and telescopes are what many birders heading to Carara or Sarapiquí carry instead of a camera, and security and surveillance covers the Wi-Fi cameras and recorders that watch a gate, a parking space or a shop counter.

Lens mounts and the long zoom a birder ends up buying:

pick the system before the body, because good lenses outlive several cameras. Canon’s mirrorless bodies use RF lenses and run older EF lenses through Canon’s adapter with autofocus intact. Nikon’s Z bodies take F-mount lenses on the FTZ adapter, though older lenses without a focus motor of their own lose autofocus. Sony’s E mount has the deepest choice of third-party lenses from Sigma and Tamron. The kit zoom handles people and landscapes; for a toucan at the top of a tree it falls short, and the telephoto most birders move to often costs more than the body. In binoculars, a mid-size pair with a wide field of view is easier to put on a bird moving through leaves than a high-magnification one, which shakes in the hand and goes dark in forest shade. Buy them waterproof and gas-filled: an unsealed pair lets in the damp that later fogs the prisms from inside. For security, a wired kit with its own recorder keeps filming when the home internet drops; a Wi-Fi camera saving to the cloud does not.

Entry mirrorless kits against an older DSLR:

a new entry mirrorless kit with its zoom sits around ₡550,000 to ₡700,000 on a Costa Rican shelf. An entry DSLR a few generations old, with its kit lens, tends to change hands for ₡150,000 to ₡250,000. Two things pull it down: the makers now design their new lenses for mirrorless mounts, and an old body has nothing left to upgrade. What holds it up is the glass, which keeps working on a mirrorless body through an adapter, so a used kit with a good extra lens is worth clearly more than the body on its own.

Fungus behind the glass of a used lens:

it shows when you shine a phone torch through the lens from the back and look in from the front. Fungus looks like fine branching threads, a little like a cobweb; haze is an even, milky film. Both grow on gear left shut in a cupboard through the rainy season, and on the Caribbean side, from Limón to Puerto Viejo, a lens that never leaves its bag can turn quickly. Cleaning means taking the lens apart, and the spores spread to other lenses in the same bag. Zoom through the whole range and turn the focus ring: grit usually means sand from a beach day. Ask for the shutter count. On an action camera, check the seal on the battery door and the lens cover for scratches. A Wi-Fi gate camera should come off the seller’s app account before you pay, because some brands keep a camera tied to its first owner even after a reset.

A camera bag going to its next owner:

it sells sooner when the listing says how it was stored, in a dry box with silica gel or a cabinet with a dehumidifier. Photograph each lens with light passing through it and the sensor with the lens off. Name the mount, the shutter count and what is in the bag: spare batteries, charger, hoods, cards. Listing body and lenses separately often pays, because a birder already shooting Sony may want only your telephoto. Someone driving in from Alajuela will want to shoot a few frames, so charge the batteries, leave an empty card in the camera and have a laptop ready to look at the files full size.