What gear should I get?

[Fred588]

This post (okay, semi rant) is intended to provide some advice to anyone thinking about getting into video or photography production, whether related to quicksand or not. Although my career job was university teaching and completely unrelated to any kind of photography, I have been involved in photography (first still and then video) for 54 years.
The question is often asked, "What gear should I get?" My attempt to answer that is as follows:
First, don't even think about gear until you know what sort of work you want to do. Until you decide that, get something inexpensive and play with it. When I started out, in my teens, I tried to get into everything. I had roll film cameras, a sheet film camera, light meters, flash units of various kinds, film and print processing chemicals and related things, and on and on. When I tried to travel around to take pictures I hauled everything and the result was very few pictures that were any good. Later, in my 40s and 50s, I began to focus on documenting my travels. The only gear I brought along was a Nikon 35mm camera and a lot of film. The walls of my university office and now my home, are covered with the results.

Now, when you know what you want to shoot, you can think about the gear. Keep it as simple as possible. When you consider a new item ask yourself, "If I invest in this item how will it improve what I produce?" If you cannot really answer that, then don't buy it. You don't need it because you do not (yet) have a real purpose for it and it will just be in the way. I have seen this principle violated in a variety of fields throughout my career. Just because something is new does not make, automatically, it useful. Also, I would suggest being very wary of any item that is heavily touted as a major breakthrough. It MIGHT be, but it also might not be. Here is an example. Early in my career I remember reading an article, about "a major breakthrough in educational technology that had occurred several decades earlier. The breakthrough would mean no more need for expensive brick and mortar school buildings or highly paid (at the time) teachers. What was this breakthrough? No, it wasn't the computer. It wasn't PowerPoint. It wasn't the language lab. It was,..... roll the drums,..... educational radio! Lots of money was invested in it, but it wasn't the breakthrough it was touted as. Nor were any of the other things mentioned. To focus this same point on things photographic, a good example might be 3D photography. There have been several rounds of "breakthroughs" in 3D photography and/or 3D video, and none of them has real done much. As an aside, I can think of some potential breakthroughs that I think might be downright disastrous. Imagine trying to watch a cowboy movie in Panoramic Smellivision!
Now the above is not meant to suggest that any item of gear is foolish or useless. Smellivision might indeed be useful if it could be used to find bodies buried in the rubble of an earthquake, as properly trained dogs do now. A robot with smellivision might even be able to find and rescue people still alive, and without endangering the dog. All I mean to suggest is that you ask yourself what YOU can do with the item of gear.

OK, Fred is getting down off the rostrum now and agrees to take his medicine.

[Chimerix]

As someone whose day job is teaching video production at a university, let me say that this is excellent advice.

[dlodoski]

On the other hand, you'll never know if a new piece of technology can apply to your efforts unless you try it.

I had to be coerced into shooting on HDV (the earliest affordable Hi-Def format) - thank you Lord Muck! But ever since then, I have pushed my budget as to never be left wishing I had captured our efforts the best/newest way possible - even if it meant not being able to cope with the footage right away.

It's worked out pretty well so far.

[dlodoski]

Actually, for the beginners, I do have one piece of 'stay way from' advice. And that is regarding mirror-less (ILC) cameras.

I'm not a gear head, so maybe this particular fad has already passed. But the camera companies did a real good job selling the idea of these things.

We tried one during one season a while back. My impression is that, in the end of the day, they are basically expensive point and shoot cameras. You can't really see what you're doing with them, and you don't have the instantaneous (so-called) shutter control necessary when shooting moving subjects. My suggestion is to go with whatever SLR kit fits your budget.

[Fred588]

There are, of course, all sorts of mitigating circumstances that can change the equation. For example, if one sees SOME potential in a potential purchase, there might be various ways other than a purchase to gain a better idea of that potential. Sometimes equipment can be rented or perhaps one can get someone else to foot part of the bill. I don't see much potential for using a drone camera for quicksand scenes but I'd certainly give it a try if someone else wanted to bring one to a shoot. I've seen some very good and interesting videos of trains done with drone cameras. Perhaps something can be invented. I see a lot of potential for a system that would allow greenscreen work with panning and tilting, provided the system doesn't cost $30,000.00.
What gear is always a complicated decision. My main point, though, is to keep the focus on what one is trying to do. That is to get the gear needed to do what you want to do rather than try to do what some item of gear is for.

[Fred588]

I will add one other piece of advice regarding gear. If you want to try doing more than one kind of photography (stills and videos, for one example, or portraits and action, for another) it is a very sound principle, in my opinion, to NOT try to do it all with the same gear. There may be times when the same gear is the best for every case you want to pursue but not always.

For one example, in addition to the stills I take in combination with my video quicksand scenes, I also do what I call "small object photography." By this I mean documentary stills of objects of sizes from perhaps that of a dinner plate down to a portion of a coin. Sometimes this is referred to a "macro photography," although I do not usually get down to the point of a one to one ration of object to image size (on the camera sensor. For the quicksand stills I use a Nikon d7200 with a moderate zoom lens. Technically, I could use the same setup with some sort of close-up lens or ring for the near macro work but different equipment can work better. For the near macro work I use the same camera but change the lens to one specifically made for macro work. I may also use a close-up right but never a close-up lens.

For another example, I also make digital photo files from older, film-based (or even earlier) images. This is very similar conceptually to something I did back when I was in high school (mid 60s), although there was no such thing as digital photography then. Back then I would take a customer's old photo, such as a print, and use an SLR camera mounted on a support to photograph the print so as to make a negative (which had invariably been lost). We could also duplicate color slides using a special attachment to the camera. One could still do those today, just substituting a digital camera for the film camera, but that would not really be the route to the best results. For that sort of work today I use a scanner, and one that is specifically designed for that kind of work. Most scanners come with a little mirror device that can be used to digitize slides, but the resulting quality is not the best. Ordinary scanners also do not come with the software used to make various adjustments with that sort of work.

[Fred588]

Actually, for the beginners, I do have one piece of 'stay way from' advice. And that is regarding mirror-less (ILC) cameras.

I'm not a gear head, so maybe this particular fad has already passed. But the camera companies did a real good job selling the idea of these things.

We tried one during one season a while back. My impression is that, in the end of the day, they are basically expensive point and shoot cameras. You can't really see what you're doing with them, and you don't have the instantaneous (so-called) shutter control necessary when shooting moving subjects. My suggestion is to go with whatever SLR kit fits your budget.

I would tend to agree that, at least for the time being, a regular SLR is still superior to mirrorless versions. I used a mirrorless Sony way back in 2007 through about 2009 and subsequently went back to Nikon SLRs. I am not so sure that the mirrorless design has much to do with timing a shot, however. In my experience there IS a significant problem with timing of shots with a lot of cameras but I think it has more to do with the speed (or lack thereof) of their autofocus process than with any mirror or lack thereof.

What we all REALLY need is a camera that takes the pictures we want rather than the one we shoot. Its sorta like what we (in the camera store where I worked in high school) said about the "new camera from Kodak." You buy it an airline ticket and it goes to Florida for yu and sends back pictures. This was right after the Instamatic and Swinger cameras came out. Anyone remember those?

[Duncan Edwards]

Actually, for the beginners, I do have one piece of 'stay way from' advice. And that is regarding mirror-less (ILC) cameras.

I'm not a gear head, so maybe this particular fad has already passed. But the camera companies did a real good job selling the idea of these things.

We tried one during one season a while back. My impression is that, in the end of the day, they are basically expensive point and shoot cameras. You can't really see what you're doing with them, and you don't have the instantaneous (so-called) shutter control necessary when shooting moving subjects. My suggestion is to go with whatever SLR kit fits your budget.

I .. This was right after the Instamatic and Swinger cameras came out. Anyone remember those?

Remember them? Yes and they were all best forgotten. Bad memories of the Great North American Camera Wars between Kodak and Polaroid to see who could build the worst possible American consumer camera. Polaroid was making progress but then Kodak went totally nuclear. First Kodak stole Fuji Film's very good instant camera process for which they were sued and lost. Then they came out with the all time undefeated piece of shit photo instrument with the Kodak Disc Camera. Polaroid completely surrendered after this as they were unable to do anything any worse. Both contestants ultimately collapsed in double defeat as they failed to master digital technology that both had a hand in inventing. Such was the state of American innovation west of the Mississippi during the era.

However having hit the shutter for over 100,000 mud/quicksand photographs with all manner of cameras, dabbled as a wannabe photojournalist, and spent years in the retail photo industry, all i can say is I have written a letter to Santa Claus about getting this here - https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-produ ... s/z-7.html

The new Nikon Z7 is not only a full frame, professional, mirrorless camera, it's also hellishly expensive. Got to have it.

[Fred588]

Actually, for the beginners, I do have one piece of 'stay way from' advice. And that is regarding mirror-less (ILC) cameras.

I'm not a gear head, so maybe this particular fad has already passed. But the camera companies did a real good job selling the idea of these things.

We tried one during one season a while back. My impression is that, in the end of the day, they are basically expensive point and shoot cameras. You can't really see what you're doing with them, and you don't have the instantaneous (so-called) shutter control necessary when shooting moving subjects. My suggestion is to go with whatever SLR kit fits your budget.

I .. This was right after the Instamatic and Swinger cameras came out. Anyone remember those?

Remember them? Yes and they were all best forgotten. Bad memories of the Great North American Camera Wars between Kodak and Polaroid to see who could build the worst possible American consumer camera. Polaroid was making progress but then Kodak went totally nuclear. First Kodak stole Fuji Film's very good instant camera process for which they were sued and lost. Then they came out with the all time undefeated piece of shit photo instrument with the Kodak Disc Camera. Polaroid completely surrendered after this as they were unable to do anything any worse. Both contestants ultimately collapsed in double defeat as they failed to master digital technology that both had a hand in inventing. Such was the state of American innovation west of the Mississippi during the era.

However having hit the shutter for over 100,000 mud/quicksand photographs with all manner of cameras, dabbled as a wannabe photojournalist, and spent years in the retail photo industry, all i can say is I have written a letter to Santa Claus about getting this here - https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-produ ... s/z-7.html

The new Nikon Z7 is not only a full frame, professional, mirrorless camera, it's also hellishly expensive. Got to have it.

Indeed it is. Its about 100.00 more than the Nikon D850. But as long as you are made of money, go for the medium format Hasselblad H6D-100c, a bargain at 33K.... lens not included.