What equipment do I need
What do you need for photography? Like every other endeavor in life, you have to begin with your goals. What are you trying to accomplish? To what end are you trying to get to? If these questions seem simplistic, on the surface they are, but in reality they only scratch the surface.
If your goal is to take pictures of the grand kids, you have one set of options. If you are an appraiser who has to take pictures and process them quickly for someone’s home loan, you have another. If you want to make a profession of photography, there is a completely different set of options.
Compact Camera
The first thing that you need to decide is what it is going to be used for and how much technology that you are suited for. Take for example the person who wants to take pictures of the grandkids. Chances are that a compact camera is all that you will need. The next question is are you computer literate enough to work with your images on a computer, or will you be better suited to taking your pictures to the drugstore and have them process them into photographs?
Superzoom Camera
In the case of the appraiser, because of the type of work that they do, it will be assumed that they are more computer savvy and so they would need to have a good computer, a printer, and the software to import their images and print them to the computer as well as save them to a document. They may also choose a superzoom camera so that they can have more flexibility with shooting the exteriors and interiors of homes and buildings.
DSLR
The third case is the person who wants to make a professional living as a photographer. Here your options and needs are truly endless. There are fashion photographers, wedding photographers, portrait photographers, sport photographers, landscape photographers, and the list goes on each with differing requirements.
If you are a professional photographer, chances are that you will need a DSLR camera. These are larger, heavier cameras that have interchangeable lenses, as well as a whole host of attachments such as external flashes, remote firing units, and a wide range of internal features that are not available on compact and superzoom cameras.
So, before you even go looking at equipment, you need to understand what equipment you will need and what it will be used for. For a starter, you might ask yourself these questions.
- What do you want to do with your camera?
- What kind of quality do you need from your images?
- Is your camera going to be use for personal or professional use?
- Will you be shooting indoors, outdoors, or both?
- Do you need to zoom in to your subject or will they be close by?
- Will you be taking a lot of pictures or just occasionally?
- Will you send out to get prints, or do you want to make the prints yourself?
- Do you want to make smaller pictures (4×6, 5×7, or 8.5 x11), or larger pictures (9×12, 16×20, or 24×36)?
- Do you only need to make pictures that will only be used on the Web?
- How much money can you afford to spend?
Once you have answered these questions, you can then better understand your options.
Return to “Where Do I Start”
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