Never spend more than you need to for a camera. Ive harped on it over and over about the best cameras being the one you have on you and/or the one that takes the images you personally want and like or need. Lately, I have been looking over my shelves, emphasis on shelves, of photography equipment. I have a D200, D300, D70 (Ive actually lost it in a very safe place in the house somewhere, smh), a pair of D80s converted to visible with nIR & nIR/nUV (visible + near Infrared, the other visible + near Infrared + near Ultraviolet), a pair of D90s for my family, and of course my concert/low-light workhorse D3s. But lately, I have actually put down my exercise program D3s system and gone back to my old and trusty D300. Why? Well, it takes the images I want to get for what Ive been doing lately, mostly fine art and creative imaging. Would my D3s take superior images? Definitely...probably...maybe...eh...if I start pixel-peeping! I havent printed anything above 14x17 in a long time, so even my D300 makes excellent 8.5x11s and even 14x17s if I didnt need to crop very much. My D300 weighs just a fraction of, is a third of the size of, and 1/20th of the price to replace than, my D3s...nice. And that D300 takes images far exceeding what I need for facebook! So what if I need a much more detailed, higher quality, more low-light flexible camera? Well, the good thing about shooting inanimate objects for fine art is simple...they are usually still there if I return, I can recreate and/or return when the same lighting was available, they work on MY schedule, and I dont have to pay them to show up for another shoot, not to mention they dont require a model release, lol. So all I have to do is return with my more expensive body if I need to. More nice things about my D300 that I like is that I can replace it used for $300.00 versus $4000-$5000 for a used D3s, it actually takes pretty/really good concert shots when there is good lighting, it doesnt weigh much, it accepts all of my expensive $2000-$3000 lenses, and I can fit it into almost any small camera bag with a 50mm f/1.4 attached to it. So why should I carry around a $6000.00 body to take the equivalent images of a now $300.00 body??? Good question. My answer has shifted to you dont! Im even considering purchasing one of the new plastic 50mm f/1.8 lenses, while only a fraction of the cost of my awesome all-metal 50mm f/1.4, the quality of images that that cheaper lens is delivering is far exceeding what I actually need out of it, and only 2/3rds of a stop slower is NOT going to hurt me in almost all situations. So why should I risk my older $500.00 lens that isnt even made anymore when I can put an equivalent $200.00, or $100.00 grey market version, brand new DX version on that DX body? Well, I hope you get the point by now. In this industry now, cheaper no longer automatically equivalates to lessor quality, and in the same fashion, more expensive doesnt guarantee superior quality, especially for the vast majority of what we are normally shooting. I am not going to spend $500,000.00 for a Lamborghini to drive to work, just down the street, if I can do the same exact job with a $15,000.00 Camry, not to mention the insane maintenance costs differential. So go dust off those old, seemingly lost investments, and see what you can get out of them. You might be very surprised, not to mention pissed at yourself, when you discover that youve been wasting perfectly good equipment, and even worse, probably even considering how to afford your next expensive camera body, when you might already have exactly what you really need. Think about it. Step out of the rat race. Yes, some people are convinced that image is everything and that an expensive and huge pro-level camera is necessary to keep up the image of being a pro photographer, but in most cases, its the images that count, not your image. Oooo....I like that! One more time... ***Its usually your images that count, NOT your image.***
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 16:59:45 +0000