So what kind of gear do you really need to turn out high quality images that both you and others will appreciate and enjoy?
Truthfully, it often depends on what kind of photography you want to pursue. For wedding and portrait photography, you will need a reliable workhorse of a camera, but not one that has too many unusual features. Your choice of lenses will not be very wide in most cases as anything above 100mm - 150mm is probably not going to be used very often. You will definitely need solid, quality lighting equipment though, either studio lights or auxiliary flash units, or maybe both. In general, this kind of setup doesn't have to be very expensive and incredible results can be produced without breaking the bank. And if you like working with people, this is a great way to enjoy photography.
The nature photographer on the other hand is wading into waters that can get very deeply expensive quickly if they aren't careful. It all depends on the kind of subjects that the nature photographer enjoys most. If it is flowers and close-up work, an average DSLR camera married to a good macro lens mounted on a solid tripod will do the trick. No big problem here.
But what if you like to shoot wildlife in the field? Now, things start heating up. You will most likely need telephoto lenses and good, sharp ones to record the detail in your wildlife subjects. These kind of lenses are typically more expensive as the focal length increases, and animals are often skittish, so longer focal lengths will certainly be helpful. And if you like to shoot at times of day when outdoor lighting is relatively lower, those lenses will need to be able to allow plenty of light in to the camera sensor to keep the shutter speed fast enough to make sharp images since wildlife has a nasty habit of moving around on you unpredictably, sometimes very quickly. Really fast telephoto lenses are incredibly expensive, so the cost and complexity is mounting.
What if you want to add bird photography to your arsenal? Well, now you can really get into some expensive and technical territory. Why? Birds are small in many cases, and they are incredibly fast, especially when they are flying. In fact, some of the most difficult photography skills that can be learned is how to make sharp and crisp photos of birds in flight. It even has it's own acronym, BIF (birds in flight). Now your camera is going to have to include an advanced auto focus capability and be able to shoot continuously at 5 - 10 frames per second or more, and your choice of lenses is going to be even more critical.
An example of BIF (birds in flight)
An osprey on the move makes high demands on photo gear
As you can see, it is easy to for a nature photographer with a wide range of interests to constantly be thinking about their equipment and how to get better images in the field. But this can be hazardous to the art form itself. If we allow ourselves to spend too much time thinking about the purchase of more and more photo gear to get an increasingly smaller improvement in the final image results, we are no longer focusing on the art that we are creating. We are focusing instead on the process, on the gear and its economics, and something very important can be lost in this kind of pursuit - the love of photography itself.
This is not to say that acquiring high quality photographic gear that will be truly useful in our work is not good or even needed. But it must be kept in balance if we want to grow as photographers and create better and better images that will inspire ourselves and others. This is so because ultimately, photography is not about the camera or the lens, it's about the vision of the photographer!
No comments:
Post a Comment