Buying Your Next Camera Part 2: Building the Complete Kit

Buying Photography Gear Without Wasting Your Money — Part 2: Building the Complete Kit

Choosing the right camera and lens is only the beginning. In Part 2 of this series, we look at the rest of your photography kit — and, more importantly, whether you actually need it.

We explore how to build a practical photography system around the lenses you choose, including:

• How to build a complementary lens collection rather than simply accumulating lenses
• When image stabilisation matters — and when it doesn't
• Autofocus performance in lenses and cameras
• Flashguns and the basics of getting better light
• On-camera vs off-camera flash
• Tripods, monopods, gimbals and other forms of support
• Filters and other accessories: what is genuinely useful and what may be unnecessary
• Batteries, memory cards, bags and backup equipment
• What to look for when buying lenses and cameras second-hand
• Why a good lens can remain useful for many years, even as camera technology changes

We'll finish by putting everything together into a simple framework for deciding what you actually need to buy.

Because the aim isn't to own the biggest or most expensive camera bag.

It's to build a kit that helps you take better photographs.

It's time for another podcast...

... And... just before I go...

How would you like to improve your photography today?

If you would, I have a free PDF that takes you through 10 tips that you can apply immediately and, I hope, will create a positive change in your photography.

So, if that sounds like something you would like, please click here and get your download.

Have a great day

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to part two. And last week we looked at lenses and bodies. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about lenses before I carry on. But if you are looking to either buy a new camera system or upgrade what you've got, hopefully some of these tips are useful for you. And one of my approaches is to try and avoid spending money where I don't have to, because as you I'm sure are very aware, it's very easy to spend a lot of money on photography gear. So picking up on what I spoke about last time, which was starting with the lenses or lenses first. My question to you is before you buy another lens, how well do you know what your existing lens can do? So what I mean by that is what kind of results can you get using different focal lengths if you've got either primes or zoom lens or some combination? What difference does it make to your images and compositions when you either change focal length or you move your position or you change your perspective? So by that you might get up high, you might go down low, left or right. How much have you experimented with what your lens will offer? So there's positional changes, there's changing aperture, which obviously is affecting depth of field. And composition is the is the fundamental thing because once you get past the gear part of it and the technical side of what's capable, what's possible with what you have, composition is the real driver, and that's what is what makes images stand out. So the bottom the really important question to ask yourself is is it your equipment that's limiting or is it your technique? So unfortunately, a lot of people decide it's the they invest in equipment when they really should be investing in education. And so I without over labouring that point, I do want to make that that is a very important aspect because um, as I said, I don't want you spending gear uh money, you don't have to. Right. So I want to talk about lenses a little bit more. So I spoke about where they're used and um that they're the most important part. And I want to just pick up on that again and just really dive into focal lens a little bit more. I'm not gonna labor it, but what I'm talking about here is setting up it is a lens collection, but it needs to be a collection that you're going to use. And I will put my hand up that I did invest in a lens and it was not a cheap one, it was a wide angle zoom, and I rarely use it. And it's a beautiful lens, it's a Canon Professional. But I've got another lens that I've had for years that is just more convenient for various reasons. So I've done it. Um, and I'm sure you've got one or two bits of kit knocking about that um you probably don't use. So this is why it's important to approach the lens situation, the lenses you're gonna invest in with the end in mind, as it were. Think about where you're gonna use them and what's the capability gap that you that you've identified that you don't that you that you have with your current lenses, or you're gonna upgrade, so you need to just make sure you covered everything. So, what are the general what what are what's a starting point? That's all I'm gonna give you here. So, as a general purpose lens, a 24 to 70 mil is really nice because it gives you a little bit of wide angle and it gives you a little bit of telephoto. And if you're just just doing general photography, family, friends, events have going on, occasionally with a street, maybe your holiday, generally a 24 to 70 will cover most of what you want to photograph. It's a nice all-round focal range. If you want to go a little bit further, look at a 70 to 200. So I remember when I can't imagine when my wide angle was, but I remember having getting quite excited actually about having a 70 to 210. It was a Minolta. I had a couple of a couple of Minolta X700s at the time, and I had an X300 before that. But that's a nice lens, it gives you more reach, and it and the 200 gives you a nice reach that's different, it's obviously different to what you would normally see with um your eye and with things like smartphones or compact cameras and things like that, unless you've got one with a long lens. So 200 is a nice setup. So, as a general purpose setup, having a uh wide angle or a zoom lens that's 24 to 70 anyway, gives you that little bit of wide angle capability without going extreme. And the 7200 then gives you that extra reach. So those two lenses are a nice combination as a general starting out kit. So if you if you're brand new to photography, you don't know really what you want to shoot, you maybe don't have a lot of money. Um, think about that as a setup. I would suggest buying secondhand with probably a DSLR body because you can get really good value on those, and that would set you up nicely. Now, if you want to go further, if you are looking at wildlife or sports, then you definitely want to be going longer than that. You need more reach. So I'd recommend looking at either a 100 to 400, so that's a typical kind of pro um length, or it might be 100 to 500, or there is some nice 150s to 600 that I must admit I was looking at one for a while, I've used them before, and that extra 200mm going from my 100 to 400 from uh to a 150 to 600 just gives you the extra reach. And 600 is nice if you want to photograph small birds, things like that. So if you are serious about wildlife photography, then I would recommend that you look at one of those lens, zoom lens um options to add to what you already have. Um, so that gives you then a nice set of lenses without having to lug about a really big lens all the time if you're doing more general purpose. But every now and again you head off and do some some wildlife. If you want to photograph landscape, you probably want to think of something maybe a little bit wider angle, maybe a 16 to 35 is a good uh range to go for. The 24, if you've got the 24 to 70, they might do it. But if particularly if you've got a crop sensor, though, you might want to look at something like 16 to 35, so you've got that wider field of view. Now, um something to explain that I didn't, but if you're not familiar with what I'm with with what the term wide angle in telephoto and what they actually mean, if you go back to film days, if you go back to 35mm film and full-frame DSLRs or full frame mirrorless, the lens focal length gives you the same eye view as you have as a person, is 50 millimeters. So that gives you the same field of view and it gives you the same magnification. So, in other words, there's zero magnification compared to what you would normally see. So that's um what we call a normal lens. 50 uh prime lens of 50 millimeters would be a normal normal lens. Anything with a focal length less than that, so 35 mil, 24 mil, whatever it is, 16 mil, they have a progressively wider field of view, and hence they're known as wide-angle lenses. However, you get more distortion, and it's important to understand whether or not that's um a factor. And I did explain that last time around. So, but that's what the the wide-angle lens means. And if you've got a wide-angle zoom, it means you've basically got a zoom lens that's down at those shorter focal lengths, and then telephoto is obviously the opposite, that's for anything above 50 millimeters. So, what you're looking at there is the field of view gets narrower and narrower as you get longer focal lengths, but the magnification increases, so that's like looking through binoculars and um a telescope, things like that. So, having said all of that, have a think about what you need for different applications. So, the other one I didn't talk about there was portraits, where something like 85 to uh sort of 135 is a good focal range to be working with. Again, you'll get used to what your what works for you, but the reason that that focal length range is preferable is that you get a little bit of magnification, but you you minimize distortion of your subject so they don't have a huge nose if if they're looking at you and they or they don't look really flat, you know, they're not really compressed. It's called compressing perspective. I think I spoke about that last time. So um think about what you need, what is a reasonable setup? But I I and look at it from the perspective, and I'll come back to this is what is this piece of kit solving, what is the problem it's solving? And here it's giving you the reach that you need with the lens characteristics, which might be um minimal distortion, um, it might be around the edges or compressing perspective or whatever else is going on. So, all of these things are important. The key thing to remember is that no combination is inherently better. What is better to use that word are the things that give you the ability to shoot the photographs that you want to shoot in the creative way you want to do it. Hopefully that makes sense. All right, so that's um the focal lengths, and hopefully giving you some ideas of benchmarks for where they're used. Um, image stabilization, image stabilization is essentially there to compensate for camera movement. I also always regard it as a bit of um an add-on to me. If I'm minimizing camera movement, I rely on technique and knowing correct shutter speeds and things like that more than image stabilization. For me, image stabilization in the lens, because I don't know how good it's likely to be, and often you don't find out until you need it. Um I regard that as mopping up, but not being it's not my first point of call to um minimize camera movement. That is my technique, or it's using a tripod. However, lenses can give you optical stabilization, or you might have in-body stabilization on your camera. Um, so stabilization does help if you've got minimum movement, it can help to just stop that little bit of distortion you get. Obviously, different systems, some work some work better than others. So, really, it comes down to if that's important to you, I would recommend doing having a look at some reviews, just see what there is, which camera lenses, which cameras and lenses I guess come out with the best performance, and then if you can uh get a hold of one and try it out. Um, but for wildlife, given that we're often moving, or we're the you know, camera movement is definitely a factor because we might be in a vehicle or and definitely hand holding. I would definitely get hand holding technique down. I'm gonna talk about tripods and things later, so I'll talk about other things relevant to that. But you really need to be making sure that your stable your platform is as stable as you can make it before you start shooting anything. Um autofocus is important as well, uh obviously. But first of all, the autofocus system it needs to be appropriate for what you're doing, so um it needs to be quiet, hopefully. Um, because if you are if you've tracked something on foot, uh you don't want to give the game away if you've deliberately kept downwind, like I was with some a couple of rhinoceros we were just tracking to get photographs, and we found them and they were both seemed to be asleep. They are really cranky animals, and you just don't want them coming at you because they're gonna run faster than you are. Um, anyway, so things like noise, and and that goes for the shutter as well. But autofocus systems, noise. Think about all of those aspects and are they a factor? Because where it's wildlife, they probably are. What are the um features of the autofocus system? So some of them have tracking, they can recognize faces and things like that. That can be pretty useful, but it needs to be workable for the environment you're in. So it's one of those things, if you have it, I'd really practice with it so that you're familiar with it as much as you can. But have a think about what the autofocus capability of the equipment is. So that will be the lens and the camera. Um, and I tell you, if I'm trying to reduce the autofocus speeds and things, because it's all periods, you know, the time it takes. Um my telephotos allow me to set the minimum focal distance focus distance, which might sound irrelevant, but what I can do is just cut out it trying to find something to focus on very close to me. Um again, I forget what the distances are, but I always do the

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SPEAKER_00 13:45

long one. If I know my subject is a fair way off, then I'll just cut out, I'll just flip the switch so that it's only searching in the more distant uh area to find my subject. So anyway, have a think about the key things that are important for you for autofocus. Um, I want to talk

(Cont.) Buying Your Next Camera Part 2: Building the Complete Kit

SPEAKER_00 14:02

about briefly flash guns and lighting. So I never use flash with wildlife, that's thing number one. Um, there's a couple of reasons for that. One is it's likely to distress the animal, um, which I don't want to do. I want to really be capturing things in as unobtrusive a way as possible, which isn't always that unobtrusive, frankly, but you do what you can. Um, the other thing is that if you if you're on foot with an animal and you startle it, it's gonna do one of two things. It's gonna either run away or it's gonna come at you. And a lot of animals will come at you, possibly more than you imagine. And things like an elephant coming at you is really not a good idea. So for me, using Flash with wildlife is a really dumb idea from both the perspective of personal safety, but also I don't like to distress the animal. I want to it as much as I can make it, I want to I want it to be like I was never there. Um I know some people have a different opinion. Well, you know, we've all got opinions. So when it comes to things like flash guns, that depends on what you're photographing. Now, I'm I'm not gonna go into lighting in a lot of detail because it's a big topic and I'm not gonna do it justice. But if your camera has a pop-up flash in the body, um that remember is just a fill-in flash. So you only because it's not very powerful, it's not gonna deliver a lot of light onto your subject. And you've got things like the inverse square ratio, it means that as you double the distance from the light source, the intensity of the light that strikes you halves. Hopefully that makes sense. But the bottom line is if you are photographing something other than something that's very close to you, a flash gun is unlikely to deliver sufficient light. The problem with flash on the camera is that even if it's a powerful flash, it does it, one is it tends to burn out things that are close because obviously the the intensity of light is diminishing very rapidly as you get further away. So anything that's closer tends to be overexposed, and things in the background are underexposed. So that's a limitation of flash. Another one is it that the flash gun, if you use the hot shoe on the camera, it's in the same plane as the lens. So the light, so the vertically one's above the other. That means as you fire light at your subject, if it has eyes with retinas in them and it's looking at you, the retinas will reflect that light back directly into the lens, but it tends to illuminate all the blood vessels in the eye, which is where you get red eye. So that's the idea of the pre-flash. I don't know how well that works, basically because I never shoot people that way. Um, but that that's an important thing to remember. So on-camera flash is okay, but I think you're often better off with an off-camera hot shoe somewhere else, which might just be a little hot shoe on a cable that plugs into the on-camera hot shoe, and you just hold it while someone holds it for you, or you just mount it on a tripod or something. But yeah, generally, I I think you really need to be careful. Look at what you're doing, particularly if you're doing portrait work, because you may well be better off with a studio light of some sort with a diffuser on it. Um, yeah, and I'm not gonna say any more on that because really I think with Flash, um, it it is a whole topic in itself. But um yeah, the the lighting quality is really important, and mostly most of the time that's likely to be a softer diffused lighting, is gonna give you a better result. Um yeah, once you get to yeah, off-camera stuff, you're also looking at things like flash triggers, softboxes, umbrellas, reflectors, diffusers, all of those things. Um all I'm gonna say on lighting equipment is that you only want to buy lighting equipment because it solves a specific photographic problem. Uh and obviously that's true for anything you buy. Um, but I I get I'll do a I'll do a podcast on lighting at some point. I'm looking to set up and start doing more video um podcasts, and um, I think uh lighting is a good one for that. So as far as wildlife goes, and as far as getting a the camera gear, look, if you if you want a flash gun, if you want to experiment with it, just get one that's programmable so you can vary the intensity, ideally has a um a bounce head, so you can lift it, it will pivot up and ideally rotate left or right as well. And then you can just experiment with using that and start to understand what the impact is of using an artificial light source um on your subject. And I'm gonna leave that one there, okay. Well, on supports. So uh when I'm traveling, I do often take a lightweight tripod, and um, so that's one kilo one. And I did use it when I was climbing Kilimanjaro, because they did a bit of astro up there, but it needs to be lightweight, and you really want to make sure you're using it. Now, one so there's a couple of things I suggest with tripods. One of them is counter to what I saw somebody else recommend on um a landscape photography podcast, um, and that is which leg sections you extend first. So I always extend the upper ones first because they're thicker and so they're more stable. So if you're photographing and there's wind or other things going on, you you want your tripod to be as stable as possible, particularly if you're doing a longer exposure. So I always use the upper leg sections first and extend those first, and then the thinner ones at the bottom, I'll use those last. This guy was recommending the opposite simply because if you extend the bottom sections first, if you do need to extend or lift the camera up a little bit more by extending more leg sections or the next leg section, the clip, the clamp is up at the top, and so you're not so it's easier to balance the camera and just do it that way and extend the legs one at a time. It's a fair point, um, but to me, I'd still rather have the rigidity on a particularly on a lightweight tripod. However, it's whatever floats your boat. So I'm just presenting both things. The other thing is particularly if you've got a longer lens, just make sure that you have one of the tripod legs in front of the camera setup. So, in other words, you've you're behind the camera and the lens, the lens is sticking out. Make sure one of the tripod legs is underneath the lens, basically. Because if you don't, your center of gravity of the whole setup is likely to move very easily outside the um the footprint of the tripod, um, which means it's going to fall over. So that is it. So with things like landscapes and astro, tripods definitely important. Um, wildlife, I think not generally. Um partly lack of movement because well, well, if if wildlife isn't moving, then that's fine. And definitely for birds, you want a tripod as well, because you're on a big lens. If you've got a 600mm lens, you you it's really hard to handheld that, uh handhold it. So use a tripod for that kind of photography. With wildlife, I recommend um if you're using a lens up to 400, you can pretty much hand hold it, and even the 150 to 600 with a bit of practice. If you work on your skills and maybe a body upper body strength bit, um you're probably better off hand holding because you can move very quickly to focus what's going on. If you're in a vehicle, I always recommend um something like a beanbag or a rolled-up jacket or something like that, if you're going to rest the lens on the side of the vehicle. And the reason for that is that I mean you might be metal on metal anyway, which you don't really want, but also they'll generally leave the engine running, depending on what it is you're looking at. But often if it's things like an elephant, definitely a hippo, things like that, they might come at the vehicle. Uh, if they are for for whatever reason, if if they're not happy with the situation, they will well come at the vehicle, in which case the whoever's driving will probably keep the engine running so they can move away very quickly without things you know getting more exciting than you want them to be. So that means there's going to be vibration through the side of the vehicle. So if you've got a pad of some sort uh between the vehicle and your lens, that should dampen out most of that um vibration, and that's a higher frequency vibration. So you're using the faster shutter speed anyway. I don't recommend that because often if you're in with vehicle with people in the vehicle, as soon as you get lined up, someone's going to move and it's going to muck it all up. So, anyway, um, my suggestion with wildlife is to think practical and it's probably not going to be a tripod, possibly a monopod, maybe for birds. If that's I don't really use, I do own a monopod. I don't know. I've I've maybe used it once or twice. So I rarely really use it. But if you're into monopods, that's great. For travel, you really want to be as light as possible. So tripod probably going to work anyway. So you may need to be a bit more creative and just work on ways of just bracing the camera while you're shooting, um, so that you can so you you minimize movement, or maybe you set it up and use a remote cable release or a Bluetooth release or something like that, or a timer, use the timer on the camera. Uh, because the three-seconds normally one about three, normally one about ten. So ten allows you to get round in front of the camera. The three-second one or whatever it might be is just a way of removing camera uh camera shape through the action of pressing the shutter button. So it just eliminates that. Alright, so um, so so in short, just be a bit realistic about where how much you're going to use a tripod. Now I I I mean I have a big solid one that I use for studio stuff, or if I'm going to go somewhere with the car, I might use it, but generally I'll use the lightweight one if I'm traveling. Other accessories. So um what other things to think about? Um, so spare batteries might be one. Uh, I so that's more of a factor if you're going somewhere where you can't recharge um the batteries that often. Uh, what I tend to do with my cameras, I buy a bolt-on thing at the bottom, uh, which I've already mentioned, which carries two batteries. Uh, simply because uh it actually I prefer the handling of the camera with that, but it does give me the advantage I've got a two two battery um supply rather than just one, so I can run longer if I need to, if I need to go all day without recharging, that's not a problem. Lens hoods I totally recommend because and I always use them, and it's not so much for the optical stuff, but it protects the end of the lens. And this is particularly true. I do it everywhere anyway, because I'm in and out of vehicles, and I you you an accident happens without you realizing it, you know, it's just in a moment, and then you might have done significant damage to your lens, or you might have jarred one of the lens elements out of alignment slightly, and it just mucks up everything. So the the reason for using a lens hood, it generally, if you swing the camera, and that's often when these things happen, it means the end of the camera is actually a softer bit of plastic, which can absorb quite a you know, reasonable amount of force before it breaks, and even if it breaks, it's absorbed that force, so it's not hitting the lens itself, it's just absorbing energy that doesn't reach the lens, which is what you what what you want. So I always use the lens, I always have the lens hood on for that reason, regardless of where I'm shooting. Uh, things like memory cards. Uh, I look my approach is to buy the best and the fastest memory card, so the highest quality, fastest and largest capacity that is available at the time when I buy the camera, because it all work together, and that means that I'm going to get the best performance out of that camera in terms of how far how fast it can write files to the storage right from the off. The other thing I do is at the end of each shoe, I always download all of the stuff, images and movies, to my computer. I carry a computer with me, and then I put them onto solid state um hard drives, external drives. So these solid state drives, they're very small, they're very light, and they go in your pocket easily. So when I'm traveling, they're always on my body somewhere, um you know, in my jacket, in my pocket, wherever, so I don't lose them. The other reason is that buying high performance cards, as I found out recently, is really expensive. So I've got two cards in the R6 that I bought, and both of those cards are over a thousand dollars. So, you know, unless you've got loads and loads of money, uh to me, it doesn't make sense carrying multiple camera cards. I've got redundancy in the camera anyway. I do have some spares that I carry with me, they're lower performance, but you know, in a pinch they'll do. But that's my approach to um memory cards. So, you know, it's again, it's whatever floats your boat, but I never use them for long-term storage, they're just for acquiring the image in the camera, and those cards just stay there. And I've never had a problem with any of them to date, touching wood. Uh, obviously, you need cleaning kit, um, camera bag to carry a stuff. Something else I recommend is um a splash cover. So that gives you rain protection, but also if you're in a very um dusty environment, which I've been in in India and in Africa, different places in Africa tend to be very dusty. An issue I had in Tangania one time was uh very fine dust that managed to work its way between the lens and the camera body, and it got into the sensors somewhere, and it was actually stopping the camera from talking to the lens, and I had an error come up, and I had to sort of whip the lens off, clean everything, put it all together in an environment where I wouldn't normally think about doing that. So I was kind of limping through, getting getting a few pictures, but then it would fail again, so I'd have to do it again. Putting the spray cover on, so that's got an elasticated hole that goes over the front of the lens, that all goes over the lens and the body assembly, and then there's um uh your viewfinder eyepiece comes off, and you put particular one on there, and that clamps everything together. That has been just brilliant in dust environments because it keeps everything so clean. So I've never had that problem recur since I've been using the spray um cover. So I definitely recommend those. Uh backup storage, I recommend. So I'd use the solid state drives, and then the other things are things like filters. Um, so I have a UV filter over the end of the lens just to protect it. Some people are very against putting filters over high-quality glass. Um, I'd do it to protect the end of the lens because if for any reason, so obviously I use the lens hood as well, but it just gives me that double protection um if I need it. Uh, that if I do damage something, I would rather damage a hundred dollar or scratch a hundred dollar filter uh than a two thousand dollar lens. Um so yeah, that's what I tend to do. So it's up to you, and um obviously there are all sorts of filters out there, so I'm not gonna go into filters, but um I do suggest that you do think about protection of the the camera equipment while you're um in the field because you don't want an accident to happen. Again, um the important thing is not to just accumulate accessories because they're there, but think about what problem you're solving with the accessory that you're buying. Now, a couple of final two things I want to talk about: buying used and um then the final buying framework. So just buying used, the things to think about. Uh first of all, I like to buy from places where I can always take it back, where I've got a limited warranty, doesn't have to be that long because I'm just going to take that camera and I'm gonna use it and make sure everything works and do it within the time where I can take it back. But particularly for things like lenses, um, look at the glass. I I always shoot and then uh shoot at different apertures, different focal lengths, all that sort of stuff, and then really have a good look at the image on and blow them right up 100-200%, so I can really spot any distortion or scratches or anything. But the things to look for are damage to the glass, a fungus in the lens, because it does get there. If a lens has been hasn't been stored perfectly, and certainly for a long period, you will get fungus growing in there, and then it's just a matter of time before the thing's unusable. Uh, you might get scratches, uh, make sure the autofocus is working, stabilization, the zoom and the focus rings operate smoothly. Uh, you might have um um an adjustment to adjust the friction, make sure that's working, and so that might be on the zoom. I have that on my some of my zoom lenses to stop the lens just sort of slowly expanding or um going to a longer focal length while it's just hanging there because then it might knock against things. Uh make sure the mounts are all good, there's no physical damage. Um the thing about this is, I mean, I've got cameras that well used, and some of the paint's rubbed off a bit in places, but there's no dents or scratches or anything like that on them, um, or at least where it counts. I managed to scrape the top of my um viewfinder housing on one of them, but it's just surface. So if anything has dents and things like that, um I definitely avoid it. But like I say, uh I think the best thing to do is go somewhere where you get some sort of warranty so you can um uh always take it back. The important thing is that the technology does change, and that's obviously what we've got with this transition to mirrorless that we're going through at the moment, but good optics and good cameras aren't obsolete because they're not the latest things. So, as I've said, DSLRs are really, really good cameras. The people who've been taking the most amazing wildlife photographs on DSLR systems for decades, so there is absolutely nothing wrong with going down that path. And in fact, I think the advantage these days is that you're likely to get extremely good value for money. Okay, so um the final thing I just want to go to it's really to summarize what I've been talking about, and that's to talk about the buying framework. So, when you're approaching any of this stuff, think about what is it you want to photograph. So, what are the things you photograph? Having identified that, step two is what are the focal lengths that you need in order to do that? So that starts to define what the lens component of your camera system is. Step three, do you want to use prime lenses or zooms? What are the pros and cons for you between using primes or zoom lenses? Or maybe it's a combination of both. Step four, what are the apertures that you need to work with? Do you need really big apertures or are sort of more average perfectly fine for what you need to do? So it's again buying for what you need, not what is nice, you know. No, it's not about having go faster stripes or one of a better expression, you know, it's it's what you need. Step five, which sensor size makes more sense, be it in terms of reach or in terms of weight and size and budget, of course. You know, which one fits the bill more closely? Step six, camera body, obviously, that's the next thing determined by sensor size. And also what are the features of the camera body that are particularly important to you? Chances are not many of them will be, that will, but there's likely to be one or two critical ones, and they're the ones that should be the deciding factor. Step seven, think about support, tripods, all that kind of thing, and lighting, how you're going to light your subject if you need to use artificial lighting. And then step eight, think about any accessories that are necessary, and that's really important. And then step nine is to look at the total budget. Hopefully, the two are reasonably close to one another, or you might even have a bit of leeway, or you might have to you know have a rethink or build things up slowly. The important thing here is what you're doing is you're not building a camera collection, unless you're a collector, in which case all of this is irrelevant, but you're not building a camera collection. If you're a photographer, you're building a photographic system, and that is so important to understand because that determines what you buy. It forces you to ask the really important question is what is the problem that this thing solves? And if you don't have a good answer, you simply don't buy. It's just that um that simple. So that concludes um this pair of podcasts. So I think I've gone on a bit longer than I intended, but what would be really useful to me is for you to let me know what you'd like me to talk about, what you'd like me to what you'd like to hear about. Also, I am in the process of going over to more videos, so anything you'd like to see, let me know. You can reach me at Graham at GE.photography. You can and obviously through the website www.ge.photography. The final important thought I'm gonna leave you with, and I really started with this, is that a lot of people end up buying new cameras and new camera gear and spending a lot of money because the marketing looks great and you know the stuff they show you in the marketing is good. And they think that buying the new gear will significantly change their photography. And for I don't want to say for most people, I guess, certainly a lot of people anyway, it makes no difference at all because the problem is not their gear, it's their skill level. It's we are I I guess you could look at us, look at us photographers as craftsmen in one sense or craftspeople. And the good thing that separates good craftspeople is they really understand their tools, they understand what they're using, they know what the limits are, they know what they can achieve with it, and they also know what they're trying to achieve. So they know where the gaps are, and that's the approach that I believe is really healthy in photography. So if you don't know what you're currently using, if you don't understand your current gear, start there first and get educated, and then you'll know where the gaps are, and that's what drives um future purchases. In terms of education, I recommend getting a start-to-finish education at least once. And the reason is that when you do a start a course that assumes no knowledge, you are building up foundation stones, if you like, of knowledge that subsequent applications, subsequent types of photography rely on. You you then build on top of those. If you do not have the foundations, you are going to struggle. Everything you do is very, very hit and miss, is a very unstable structure and it's a very un unsatisfying way of doing photography. So I recommend that you look at a course if you are struggling a bit. I do them, have a look on my website on the education part. There if there's free stuff there, there's beginning to end courses. And if none of mine float your boat, then please go to somebody else. But do get at least one start to finish basics education and then go on to the other things. All right, that's it for me. I'm going to stop now. Thanks very much for your time. Um, I hope to hear from you. Let me know how you go. Please remember to like, subscribe, hype, all those other things. And uh, I'll speak to you on Friday. Bye for now.