Hi All
I am an amateur hobbyist photographer who has recently started dabbling in photography. I have the Canon EOS R7 along with the kit lens (RF 18-150mm) and the zoom (RF 100-500mm). I am primarily interested in bird, wildlife and macro photography but got the kit lens as a handy lens for (non wildlife related) travel and as a walk about lens. For wildlife in particular, I wanted to check if I should also be getting a 70-200mm lens to go with the 100-500mm? The reason I ask is (and pardon me if this really basic) wouldn't my kit lens fill the gap if I want to take a wide angle shot? Separately, what would be a good macro lens to shoot smaller insects, butterflies etc.? The last question is does it make sense to get an extender as well? Especially for birds, I sometimes find the 500mm to be challenging and feel the need to maybe have some extra reach? Thanks all in advance for your help. Much appreciated.
Welcome! Congrats on starting your photography journey :)
I think having a general lens of some type (like your kit lens) is good for all photographers for the reasons you mention (travel, walk about, etc), but also because it is a good lens to experiment with other types of photography, or to try new perspectives on a genre you enjoy (like wider angle wildlife).
In my opinion, the 70-200 has a lot of overlap with the 100-500 you already have. If you find that you are shooting a lot in low light and need something like the 70-200 f/2.8 to keep up, thats one thing, but I wouldnt rush to get the 70-200 for the focal length (especially since you already have 70-100 covered with your kit lens).
Regarding Macro lenses, Cannon makes a few good ones. Which one you want would largely depend on what focal length you'd like, and the working distances you would have with them (longer lenses mean you don't have to get as close to your subject, which is useful for living subjects). The RF 100mm 2.8 L macro lens is fairly expensive, but I've heard its a great lens.
Lastly, regarding an extender - you can certainly get one, but be aware that there are limits to how "zoomed in" you can get before you start to see tradeoffs in image quality. On a crop sensor like the R7, your lens at 500mm is already giving you an equivalent of 800mm of reach, which is usually a good focal length for birds. Going beyond that, you will likely start to see images that are less sharp. In addition, if you are photographing things fairly far away and zooming in significantly, you may see heat distortion showing up in your images. But with all that being said, if you want to get an extender to play around with longer focal lengths, go for it! One of the best things about photography is to experiment.
One last bit of advice on all the items above - if you have access, you might want to consider renting some of these lenses to see if they would fit the type of photography you are trying to do before buying $1k+ lenses not really knowing if they will work for your situation. Just an opinion from someone who invested in gear that ended up not working for me the way I had hoped when I started :)
@adam-sheridan Thanks very much Adam, for your very helpful and pragmatic feedback. I was really confused about the 70-200 but your guidance is really helpful. Thanks also for suggesting the option to rent first - I am based in Delhi and we have quite a few places to rent camera gear so will certainly try out the macro 100mm first before investing. Thanks again.