What Gets The Job Done?

On Tuesday I talked about what the right camera is, and I'm going to continue on that theme today. It can be easy to get caught up in the technical aspects of photography and gear, but let's get back to the basics. What do you need to get the pictures that you want to take? Did you start out with or now have an an entry level camera, like a Nikon D40, D60 or D3000, a Canon Rebel Xs, XSi? If so, look at your pictures, if you have taken bad pictures with one of those cameras, is it because of the camera or because you were/are new to photography?  I can tell you right now, that in many situations those entry level cameras will give you just as good a photo as any high end camera.

I'm not trying to say that people should never upgrade to higher end gear, because if you need higher end gear, then there is no reason not to upgrade. I upgraded from a D90 to a D300, but for specific reasons, and I do not regret moving up in the least. My post is pointed squarely at photographers who are just getting into the photography, within the last year or so, who own entry level cameras and feel the desire to upgrade to a higher end camera, but don't really know why. I can understand some users wanting to upgrade for features like better auto focus or more hard buttons and dials for changing settings more quickly on the fly, but if you are just upgrading just for more mega pixels, you might want to think again.

I would never say that I was a great landscape photographer, but from what I've seen over the last 7 years of using digital cameras, higher resolution only helps on extremely large prints. Now if you are viewing your images on a LCD picture frame or a large 1080p (1920x1080) TV or monitor, you honestly wont see much difference between a 10MP image and an 18MP image. Why? The monitors don't have the resolution to show the difference! 1080p is only 2MP, so if that is how you are viewing your images, more sensor resolution isn't going to make a huge difference at the end of the day. That being said, if you do need to crop a lot, such as a nature photographer, who can never get enough reach, then I can understand wanting more resolution.

With that out of the way, what about the basics? What does it really take in order to get the pictures that you want to take? A fancy $1500 camera and $2000 lenses? If used correctly you can get as good or nearly as good results from a $500 camera and $200 lens, in many situations. Sure the $3500 worth of equipment will help you get sharper images, in cases such as if you need to shoot with the aperture wide open for example. A standard kit lens will never shoot at F2.8, but in most cases, if you are shooting a landscape at F8 or higher, then there is a good chance that you wont see any difference in image quality at all. This becomes even more apparent if you use the same lens on different camera bodies, because unless there is a huge leap forward in resolution or noise performance at high ISO rating, it is unlikely that you will see much improvement by changing camera bodies.

On Monday I'll start talking about how to get the most out of the camera gear that you have now.