Today’s Post by Joe Farace
If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.—Red Adair
Let’s get this out of the way first: Cameras don’t make photographs, people do.
To actually make a photograph, it’s obvious that you’re going to need a camera and some kind of light source, even if it’s just the sun, as was the case in today’s featured image. But you don’t need a $32,995 Hasselblad H6D-100c to make a photograph. Any, and I mean any, camera—film or digital—that takes interchangeable lenses will let you create a great image.
Don’t Listen to The Herd
Recently I talked with an aspiring portrait photographer who shoots with a Nikon DSLR that was new four years ago and he told me that when he went to photography meet-ups, people disparaged his use of “old” gear.
My advice: Don’t let other other people, especially other photographers, determine how you spend your money. Having too much cash tied up in cameras, lenses and lights or worse, debt for all that gear will sink an aspiring professional photographer faster than anything else. I believe that you should sell your photographs based on the quality of your work and well as your personality and business ethics. The truth is that if your clients like their photographs and you, they don’t care if you shoot with a Pentax K1000.
How I made this shot: I Made this photograph with an 18-megapixel Canon EOS 7D at a past SEMA show in Las Vegas. The lens used was an EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS at 135mm. The camera’s original price was $1699; the lens had a price tag of $499.00. You can buy an EOS 7D, in good condition, as I write this, for less than $200. A used EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens goes for about the same price.
The EOS 7D is an APS-sensor camera that has an eight fps continuous shooting capability that makes it possible to capture images like this; the point where all four of this of-road truck’s wheels begin to leave the ground. The Shutter Priority (Tv) exposure was 1/125 at f/18 and ISO 640.