I am a photographer. Most photographers that I know want to own the latest and greatest equipment – including me.
There is something about owning the latest camera, flash, studio flashes and reflectors, battery packs, faster memory cards, flash brackets, and faster lenses that will make you a better photographer.
The truth is that newer, fancier, faster, sleeker, and sexy photography equipment will make you a better photographer. The technology today is getting better and better. Lenses focus faster, cameras can do more with less light, memory cards hold more and more pictures – faster, flashes are getting smarter and can light a subject wirelessly and still communicate with the camera to provide just enough light.
However, newer, fancier, faster, sleeker, and sexy photography equipment costs money – lots of it! The latest professional camera bodies from Nikon and Canon cost over $5,000 just for the body. You can spend $2,000 for a lens and still need a wide angle and a telephoto lens for your bag – and a new bag to hold it all in.
I told my wife that I wanted a new camera and she just gave me the look. All you husbands know exactly what I am talking about. She told me that I already had fancy equipment and I didn’t need another expensive camera. She is right – the equipment in my camera bag cost more than the last car that I bought – and depreciates just as fast.
I tried to tell her that the latest camera equipment didn’t have as many problems with noise – especially at high ISO’s. I tried to tell her that I could take better pictures of our kids playing basketball in those horribly lit high school gyms. I don’t think that I am going to talk her into it – at least until she gets the home improvements that we have been planning for.
OK – Do I need new equipment or do I want new equipment? I shoot a lot of high school basketball of my son playing. Faster lenses would enable me to shoot in those cold dark high school gyms and get a shutter speed higher than 1/60 at ISO 1600 or higher. In a fast a furious game with lots of action, 1/60 is not fast enough to get shots that are not blurry. In addition, the new Nikon bodies (D300, D700, D3) would reduce the amount of noise in those basketball shots at high ISOs. So new equipment would help me to take better basketball pictures.
In addition, I shoot a lot of stock photography. The new D700 or D3 would enable me to upload larger files enabling me to have XXL files available for download – thus increasing my photography income. So I could actually make a case that I need new equipment. But not everything that I want. I will write about stock photography in a future post.
So here it is – My new years resolution – I am going to make enough money this year (with my photography) to upgrade my equipment. I challenge each of you that read this to do the same – earn enough income with your photography to pay for the new sleek and sexy equipment
Who’s with me?
Happy new year!
Dave
