While a good (expensive) gear doesn’t make for a good photographer, you can’t get great photographs without a good gear. When you reach a certain level of enthusiasm and semi professionalism, you start to notice that the gear you started with, isn’t cutting it anymore. I actually stopped photography at one point for a quite a long time because I felt l wasn’t getting the results I wanted. I was also very uneducated on the technical aspects of photography and I didn’t realise why I wasn’t getting better.
I first started photography, about ten years ago, with an entry level DSLR Nikon D60, which I got as a Christmas gift. It came with two kit lenses, which I have used until just recently. I upgraded the camera body to a Nikon D7200 a year ago, it’s still a crop sensor camera but it’s on the better end of the spectrum. Before that I got the Nikkor 35mm f/1.8, which was a huge change for me, because I saw the advance you have with a quality prime lens. Before that, I thought the camera body is what matters, and lenses are not that important, damn I was uneducated!
I think I’ve advanced in leaps and bounds in the last year, because I have finally started to research and learn more about the technicalities of photography, and really paying more attention to everything. It also helps that I take pictures every day, in different lights, situations and timeframes. Who knew that it helps if you practise every day!?
Using the same two Nikkor lenses for almost ten years, and doing photography every day, and using it as a my means of making a living, it was time to start upgrading. See me justifying the very expensive new buys….
I was after the best lenses money could buy, for a crop sensor Nikon, because I didn’t want to go into full frame yet, I’m not that much of a pro. I did some extensive research before I started spending my hard earned money for new lenses. Because my knowledge about the technicalities was somewhere near ZERO, I had to start from the very beginning. Difference between a crop sensor and full frame, lens compatibilities and all that jazz.
I started searching for Nikkor lenses first because I thought that a name brand lens, made by the same manufacturer as the camera body, would obviously be the best way to go. It turns out that there are not that many options for quality pieces that are meant to be used on a crop sensor camera, and quality of the pictures was what I was looking for. While in theory, FX (full frame) lenses can be used on a DX (crop) body, the results are very different and you loose in quality because they are not fully compatible.
After endless hours of Youtube tutorial, reading reviews and bugging photography friends here in Steemit, I found out that I have to let go of Nikkor and start researching from other brands. I knew that Sigma has the Art series which seemed to be causing a lot of talk and interested, so I started researching if they had anything suitable for me.
Long story short, I splurged on the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 Art, and have been using (read:loving) it for about a month now. It was love at first touch, literally. I might be a weirdo but even just holding, and looking, at the lens let me know that this here is a quality piece and I would love it. Out the door went the old Nikkor kit lens.
After using almost exclusively the new Sigma, I tried my other kit lens, the one that has a little more reach, from 55-200mm. Quality of that is potato compared to the Sigma. Fuck, I’m screwed…
And can you guess what happens when I notice that there is a better option in the market… You knew it, I had to go for another upgrade, only a month after the previous one . Sigma makes a big brother for that wider lens, a 50-100mm f/1.8, and of course I had no choice but to buy it. I tried to stop myself for about a week, reading reviews and some of them very critical. “It’s too heavy, it doesn’t have image stabilisation and it should go up to 200mm”. Yes yes, valid points, but that damn QUALITY and wide aperture, there is nothing else like that in the market! #noregrets
I’m not sure if that idiom works in English, but it’s all I have for this. What I mean is that photography is one of those things where you can update your gear endlessly! There is always something newer, better, bigger and expensive waiting for you. I’m the kind of person that when I get into something, I go at it hard and deep (very sexual). I give it my all and I want to get better every day, and I want the best gear to help me out.
Oh and as for the “go big or go home”, those Sigma lenses are HUGE and HEAVY, I put the lighter in the picture for a size comparison but it doesn’t tell the whole story. The big bro weights in at 1.5 kilos and the lil sis is about 800 grams.
