Photography, like almost every hobby, is expensive, and the camera lens and body you buy is only the beginning of the expenditure needed to enter and stay competitive in the photography game. If you are like me, and don’t have unlimited funds to spend on photography, it can be confusing to determine what will get you the biggest bang for your buck and what will be a cool gadget that you will only use occasionally.

The upgrade mentality

The trap most photographers fall into is buying cheaper gear with the intention of replacing and upgrading it as their skills mature. As a photography educator, I cannot tell you the number of times someone has asked me “what is the best and cheapest camera body, or lens”, the justification for eyeing cheaper gear is almost always because the person is just getting started in photography and don’t want to invest a lot. The result one sees when buying cheap lenses or filters, and an expensive camera body is poor image quality.

You don’t always have to buy the best gear, on the contrary, investing more in a few key pieces of equipment can set you on the path to longer gear life, and better image quality and lower overall investment in your hobby. As a rule of thumb, I always suggest spending twice as much on your lenses as your camera bodies.

Good lenses

We all want to squeeze every bit of image quality out of our camera equipment. Manufacturers hype new camera body features like higher megapixels, and dual pixel focus leading you to believe they will be a major game changer for your photography. However, spending your money on better quality lenses is the first way to yield better quality in your images. Camera body features will ebb and flow with the market, and it can save you money in the long run if you shift your mindset to realize that the lenses are the thing you should spend your money on (because a good lens will be around through a few camera body iterations). I have a friend who is a wedding shooter, and he bought his 70-200 lens in 2008 when he purchased the Canon 5D Mark II, which is terms of most tech equates to using a dinosaur. The reality is that that 70-200 is still a very serviceable lens and has lasted through the 5D Mark III and IV, and he even uses it today for a second shooter body with an adapter on his R5. Lens technology evolves much slower than camera bodies do, and the latest generation of lenses have firmware meaning their capabilities can potentially last even longer than previous generations.   

Cheap or expensive filters

The most common mistake I see that leads to inferior image quality is buying an expensive lens and adding a cheap filter “to protect it”.  Why spend $2000 USD on a nice zoom lens and put a piece of plastic in front of it? There are two very polarized schools of thought on the UV filter to protect your lens argument. Some photographers feel that there is no reason to put anything on the end of your lens. Their reasoning is that if the front element gets scratched or damaged it is a minimal cost to get it repaired and not worth the loss in image quality. The other side of that argument is that nothing, but good quality filters made of good quality glass should go in front of the lens. I am personally on the quality filter camp.

Cheap filters, especially UV and Neutral Density (ND) can lead to loss of sharpness in your images, and color casts, distortion, and artifacts especially with cheaper ND filters.  Inferior glass filters can also introduce lens flares and other unwanted effects into your images. If you are in the cheap filter club, I would suggest seeing the image quality you are getting for yourself. Set up your camera on a tripod and shoot a nice sunset with and without your filter on the end of your lens.  Evaluate the quality of the color, focus and contrast with and without your filter.

Do your research

Do you really want to spend your hard-earned money based on the recommendations of a Facebook post or YouTube video? Realize that manufacturers send gear to YouTube channels for promotion. Ask yourself if you really trust the source of the review of that new piece of gear or if they are just looking to make money on their channel. Therefore, I don’t recommend specific brands unless I personally use them in my work, and I don’t use affiliate links or promo codes to get a kickback from the manufacturer. I want you to have the untainted information and if I tell you about a product rest assured, I have used it for years in my work or I would not recommend it. With that being said, let me tell you about this new product I recently tried… Just kidding.

If you are looking into the purchase of a new lens, consider renting it first to see if it gives you the quality you are seeking. Lensrentals.com rents lenses for all cameras at reasonable prices. Again, this is not an affiliate link I use them and have rented lenses from them many times.

Do you need a full frame?

The second most common question I get when teaching photography is: Do I need a full frame camera to get better images? To answer this question, I would first ask what kind of photography you do. If you shoot wildlife or sports, then a crop sensor camera is better suited than a camera with full frame sensor. The difference between a full frame camera and crop sensor is the size of the sensor. Full frame sensors are about the size of a 35mm film frame. Crop sensors, while smaller, are still just as capable as full frame cameras and boast a 1.6 X focal length boost over full frame cameras. This means a 100mm lens on a crop sensor camera body will effectively be equal in focal length to 160mm, allowing for more reach with zoom lenses, which is why they are preferrable for sports and wildlife purposes. This doesn’t mean you can’t use crop sensor cameras for other things, I know a lot of photographers who commonly use a crop sensor camera to shoot weddings. Until recently, full frame cameras were preferred for low light photography, but sensor technology has come so far, the historic differences between the full and cropped sensor are beginning to blur. Full frame sensor cameras are commonly used for product, landscape, and portrait photography.

Now that you understand the differences between the full frame and crop sensor cameras, the answer to the “do I need a full frame sensor camera for good quality images” is a no. There are many well known and published photographers who use primarily crop sensor cameras in their work. I shoot product photography, landscapes, and portraits, so guess which body I prefer – full frame.

Do I need expensive strobes?

The job of a strobe is to produce light, and a budget friendly Godox AD200 will produce about the same amount of light that a Profoto B10 will. Like the difference between a Porsche and a Toyota Camry, both cars will get you to your destination, the difference in price is the feature set and build quality. The more expensive strobe will create more constant colored light, and at a faster recycle time, meaning you can shoot faster with more accurate color.  Whether you need the more expensive flash depends on your use case scenario. I use both of these strobes interchangeably in my work. Both are small enough to toss in a camera bag, and both produce close to the same level of light, one just recycles faster and has more accurate color. It should be noted that the color casts and inaccurate color can be fixed in post.

Conclusion

Do you need to buy the most expensive camera gear to get good images? No. Are there key components in your gear bag that should be good quality to get good images? Yes. Focus your expenditure on good quality lenses, because they will always outlast your camera body. Tech will change, sensors will get bigger and have less noise, and if you have good quality lenses and filters to put on your body your investment will last longer and you will have better quality images.