Its Not About The Camera Gear

I always find it interesting when photographers focus on the camera and gear they use. Don't get me wrong I like nice shiny toys as much as the next person but in reality they rarely make all that much of a difference to the appeal of an image. Take this shoot with Kat Paine from Belfast as an example.

I was in the process of changing camera a while back when I got the chance to work with Kat. Instead of declining because I didnt have my full kit available, I shot with the kit that was available to me while I was waiting on my new setup to arrive. This was shot on a crop sensor Nikon D5300 that sells second hand for about 250 euro. I'm fairly certain I could have hired a 6000 euro Nikon D4S for this shoot and it really would have looked no different at all.

For certain styles like weddings, sport or wildlife then its more important to have a high end camera with fast reliable autofocus and good dynamic range. However for the kind of portraits I shoot, I can get pretty similar results on almost any camera because the scene is more controlled. I guess the point of this post is that for a lot of styles the knowledge of how cameras work, how images are exposed and how light behaves is way more important than the camera that's used to take the shot 😊