Basics of Photography Gear Guide
One of the greatest dilemma you may face as a photographer (amateur or professional) is the type of gear to use for each photography genre. The sad thing is that most amateurs don’t have options and so they put their only camera and lenses on a hard drive and in the end they don’t get good photos for certain photography sessions. Photography gear is as important as other tools are for other trades. Doing photography with the wrong gear is like a carpenter trying to make a table using farming tools!
When one hears of gear guide, he or she may expect a short but comprehensive guide to what gear to use that will fit the needs of all photography genre. That is not the case. The complexity of photography gear lies in the fact that for each genre of photography, you may need a completely different gear. For example, if you are doing wildlife photography, you will need lenses with super reach but this may not be the case if you are doing wedding photography or micro photography. For the sake of this article, we will briefly look into a few common photography genres and the gear you can use.
Wedding photography
This is one field which is really demanding and where room for error should be absent. Remember a recent case where a photographer was sued for millions of dollars for taking bad photos and video in a wedding? Don’t join the list. If you don’t have a proper gear for wedding photography, don’t take the job or look for other alternatives like hiring.
Wedding photography gear will depend on many factors including your expertise and experience, not forgetting also the cost factor. Normally, many photographers use at least two camera bodies and three lens kits. If you can afford a top-of-the-line camera body, go for it. However, you can start with cameras like Nikon D3, Nikon D300, Nikon D 5100, Sony Alpha DSLR-A330 and other equivalents. And for the lenses, you should use lenses with a large maximum aperture of f/2.8 or larger since you expect lots of movements there. Then of you will need a wide angle lens, Wide-to-Telephoto Zoom and if you can afford, image stabilized telephoto zoom lens. Prime lenses will also do the job for you.
Sports photography
In a country obsessed with cricket like India, you cannot walk through your career without having to take a few cricket game shots. Cricket and other sports need a more advanced gear and often very expensive. To start with, you will need a camera that has a continuous focus servo motor which will automatically adjust focus as subjects move close or far from the camera without having to always half press the shutter release button. This should be complemented with a camera that has a continuous shutter motor so you can continually capture images one the shutter is releases. In a nut shell, you can take good photos with just one camera body like Nikon D 5000 and long zoom lens like 80-200 f/2.8 or 70-300 f4.5-5.6 lenses.
Dance photography
The reason why dance photography is quite challenging is because capturing motion often at low light is difficult. But more that a good gear, you will need skills to capture great dance photos. The gear will be determined by the type of dance, the place and amount of light available. Though you may use speedlights to improve light, often, flashes are not allowed in dance halls so you will need DSLR reputed for shooting at high ISO settings. This also means you will need a ‘fast’ lens that has a wide maximum aperture usually f/2.8 or wider.
Final word
Though not mentioned here, there are other important pieces of equipment that you will need. These include tripods where necessary, extra batteries, extra lighting systems to be used where possible etc. like I said, it’s hard to exhaust the topic in one article. It is advisable therefore to do further research on what gear you need for what genre of photography.
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Photos by Nathan Gitonga
