What Lighting/Camera should I buy?

This is a con­tentious area with debates rag­ing about what cam­era is best. How­ever this means that the larger view­point is ignored and the user should be look­ing at the over­all cam­era sys­tem. The user needs to sit back and look at what kind of pho­tog­ra­phy they want to do (even the pos­si­bil­ity of doing) and review what offer­ings the man­u­fac­tur­ers have. For exam­ple the Nikon CLS sys­tem (the light based con­trol sys­tem for remote flashes) is gen­er­ally supe­rior than Canon’s mak­ing it eas­ier to use. Canon’s image sta­bil­i­sa­tion (IS) is far more mature and read­ily avail­able in its lens line up than Nikons VR (vibra­tion reduc­tion). This usu­ally trans­lates into Canon’s tele­photo lenses are a bet­ter choice for wildlife and sports pho­tog­ra­phy where you have to deal with low light. Each sys­tem has its strengths and weak­ness and you need to weigh up what that means to you.On top of this there is the addi­tional cost of the manufacturer’s eco-system as well what lenses are you antic­i­pat­ing buy­ing. If you’re going work­ing pri­mar­ily with nat­ural light pho­tog­ra­phy then primes and fixed aper­ture zoom lenses are almost manda­tory. Primes are cheaper than zooms as they need less lens ele­ments and also eas­ier to man­u­fac­ture and design. If you’re shoot­ing sports or fast mov­ing action then a blend of tele­photo, zoom and prime lenses are often required.

Cam­era bod­ies are also an area of con­sid­er­a­tion in what fea­tures would a user need. Whilst entry level cam­eras can be a good learn­ing tool you must ask your­self will you out­grow its capa­bil­i­ties. If so a mid-range cam­era might be a bet­ter option in the long run even though it’s more expen­sive. The inter­face of the cam­era is also impor­tant in how easy it is to use the var­i­ous func­tions of the cam­era and how intu­itive is the menu func­tions to gain access to the advanced fea­tures and the way the but­tons are arranged around the body. The final aspect is what fea­tures is use­ful or essen­tial for your pho­tog­ra­phy such as the amount AF points in the viewfinder and the types of AF points, High ISO abil­ity of the cam­era and so on. The cam­era eco-system is impor­tant in that how much sup­port is there from third par­ties, what acces­sories and so on. Canon and Nikon get far more sup­port than the other brands in light of their mar­ket dominance.

A crit­i­cal aspect to con­sider is back­ing up your images if you shoot in loca­tion whether you are going to use a dig­i­tal wal­let, lap­top or some other device. This is impor­tant if you’re doing this in a pro­fes­sional capac­ity and with the dig­i­tal medium it pays to be para­noid in regards to back­ing up data. It is far bet­ter to pay up front for a rock solid back up solu­tion than pay­ing out for data recov­ery that might not work or even be possible.

Another over­looked area is the demands that cam­eras put on our work­flow espe­cially now that we are mov­ing into high res­o­lu­tion images and High Def­i­n­i­tion video from cam­eras such as a 7D and 5D Mk II. These put a lot of strain on our com­put­ers both in pro­cess­ing time and the work­flow for man­ag­ing the data these cam­eras pro­duce. Com­puter tech­nol­ogy is a inte­gral aspect of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy espe­cially if you’re seri­ous about learn­ing how to get the most out of your camera.

Stu­dio light­ing is another area I will include here for con­sid­er­a­tion in that the user has to con­sider the whole sys­tem and needs/requirements. What mod­i­fiers does the user want, what mount­ing sys­tem, how much power, how sta­ble is the out­put and the qual­ity of light the strobes pro­duce. These are all ques­tions that a user must think about before buy­ing a sys­tem rather than set­ting a price. Whilst they may have a bud­get they should also con­sider future growth. I will cover this in more depth in a future article.

To give you an idea of what you need for pho­tog­ra­phy my first dSLR was a 10D with a 50mm f1.8 lens. That’s all, noth­ing more or less. I spent two months work­ing with this com­bi­na­tion pay­ing atten­tion to the var­i­ous abil­i­ties and fea­tures of both the cam­era and the lens before con­tin­u­ing to get more lenses. I spent a lot of time learn­ing the fea­tures so that they became sec­ond nature so when a moment came up I per­formed the rel­e­vant tasks with­out hav­ing to pause. I never buy more than 2 pieces of kit simul­ta­ne­ously instead I pre­fer to learn each bit of kit I have so I know its limits.

A final point to remem­ber the cam­era is the pho­tog­ra­phers’ paint­brush; it’s a tool to cap­ture the moment. The brand loy­alty that is endemic in forums should be sec­ondary to this, the pri­mary con­sid­er­a­tion should be; can the tools I have cap­ture the moment, and if not how can I use the tools I have, if pos­si­ble. Many pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers will own and use mul­ti­ple cam­era sys­tems to take advan­tage of their var­i­ous strengths.

In the final analy­sis we must remem­ber that after all the has­sles and tribu­la­tions of choos­ing and buy­ing the equip­ment is to have fun. You can do all the research in the world but pho­tog­ra­phy rewards hands on efforts. Pho­tog­ra­phy is an art to be enjoyed not only by your­self but also your audi­ence of any prints you produce.

Arti­cle updated: July, 2010.

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