Camera, Lens And Other Must-Have Gear Part 1

You're in the market to buy a new camera. It's more than likely that you'll get overwhelmed by all the choices you will find when you're starting out. There are different camera manufacturers different camera models with strange sounding names like the five thousand or five D-Mark three and even more confusing data sheets. You will find that your local camera store or a dedicated online shop when it was started out I was lost in this flood of information. Therefore I will give you an overview of the different options and help you find the right camera at suchin. What matters most is which camera system you want to invest in. You might already have heard of point and shoot cameras. Digital single lens reflex cameras are mirrorless systems so let's have a look at what works and what doesn't. Point and shoot camera point and shoot cameras are also called compact cameras and that by far the most used cameras fabrications parties and capturing family events. They are small and inexpensive. However they also have technical limitations such as a fixed lens which can be changed and which are often not built to be used in low light situations. Lately smartphones have taken over the point and shoot camera market too for having fun and taking photos with their friends. This system might work for you but it's definitely not the camera you want to invest in for concert photography. The bridge cameras bridge cameras are the next step up the ladder of professional camera systems as the name bridge implies they feel the need edge between point and shoot. And yes at our cameras you might have seen the superzoom bridge cameras which have had some capability impressive enough to take on safari with you. This type of camera type lacks the option of interchangeable lenses and therefore it's not the camera you want to buy for concert photography. The mirror less cameras the mirror less interchangeable lens cameras are in a class of their own that don't have a mirror and therefore don't have an optical viewfinder but to offer interchangeable lenses. Over the last few years there has been a lot of cameraman A-factors like Fuji Summerson Sony Olympus and Panasonic who have invested in this camera system. The companies are trying to attack the conventional digital camera market but until now only Fuji has a wide variation of lenses to offer. Recently I got the Fuji x t one which is capable of taking great food in low light situations. However they are still too expensive. If you're just starting out and the out of focus system is still not as good as the one in the next category of cameras. And here we go. We've now arrived at the camera system. You will want to invest in. May I introduce you to the digital single lens reflex camera system or for short DSL are in a DSL our camera light travels through the lens then to a mirror that switches between sending the images to either the viewfinder or the image sensor. This is the camera type that you will find most professionals using and it's the only camera system that makes sense to using concert photography at the moment. Good vantage of the system is the fact that you can buy multiple lenses with different focal length and apertures. You can get ultra wide angle lenses which are great when you're directly in front of a small stage and you can get 500 millimeter lenses when you're shooting. The Rolling Stones from 30 meter away in a stadium. The downside though is the price tag attached to these cameras. They range from a couple of hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. Nikon and Canon are still the market leaders and offer a wide variety of lenses. So you might as well stick to one of these two brands. I am a Nikon shooter. Various others swear by Canon. Make sure you choose to brand you're most comfortable with. Take a look at the different camera bodies the lens options and the accessories which presents to your photographer friends shoot with. They might have lenses you can borrow when you're starting out and will be able to guide you easier. If you have questions once you start investing in a system stick to it. A system switch will cost you a lot of money which you might be able to spend more sensibly crop sense of first is full frame cameras. One started out in photography. I heard the term cropped sensor first as full frame sensor in connection with D.S. of our cameras a lot. It took me a while to figure it out. So if you're also feeling lost in this jungle of technical camera terms let me try to explain. OK let's go back to the good old analog times and analog camera which takes 35 millimeter films to set a small film roles which are in fashion in the eighties. You can see here on the left hand side shoots negatives with a size of 24 by 36 millimeter. This size is due to the opening that lets the light pass through the camera and hit the film the 24 by 36 millimeter corresponds to the size of the sensor in a full frame digital camera can't. So this photo of Jonathan David of the band Korn was taken with the full frame camera and therefore it corresponds to the 24 by sutee six millimeter of an analog negative here the dimensions are not the correct ones cause the slides are a 8:44 format but I think you get the idea in a crop sensor camera. However the sensor size is smaller or cropped indicated here by the yellow box. Easy right. So let's have a look at the advantages and disadvantages of the sensor sizes and what this means for you as a photographer. First a full frame sensor as I said the sensor size is twenty four by 36 millimeter. So good quantities are due to the larger sensor size the sense that doesn't warm up as fast and therefore get less noise in your focus at higher ISO settings with these cameras. Its possible to reach ISO wireless of up to one hundred twenty five thousand and sometimes beyond the focal length written on a lens refers to the focal lengths you get and this lens is attached to a full frame body. Depending on the lens the bouquet. Its the player or the aesthetic quality of the player in or out of focus areas has a nicer quality compared to crop sensor cameras. The disadvantages are that the camera bodies such as an eye candy 884 or a canon 5 DMX 3 a very expensive and can cost you as much as a used car. They are larger in size and weight lenses that were designed for full frame cameras are more expensive. With some exceptions such as the 50 millimeter of one point eight The crop sensor cameras have a smaller sensor. And so depending on the camera manufacturer you may need to multiply the focal length of your lens with the crop factor. For example Nikon the crop factory 1.5 and for Canon it's 1.6 to check the actual focal length so the advantages are that crop sensor cameras are cheaper and you can get the camera body for a few hundred dollars. The lenses for crop sensor cameras are cheaper as well compared to the full frame lenses and camera bodies are lighter and smaller in size for the disadvantages due to the smaller sensors noise it's more noticeable in the resulting photos and the available ISO values are smaller. So for example you will have the maximum ISO setting of 3200 was 6400 and this will be probably the highest setting you can get. It isn't a wise decision to use your crop sensor lenses on a full frame body either. So you can actually do this but the results transforms show expensive full frame camera into a low megapixel machine. So you still with me. So one more thing which is neither an advantage or disadvantage just something you have to take in account a 50 millimeter lens sort of focal length it's written on talented cells attached to a crop sensor camera body will no longer have a field of view a 50 millimeter. So what does this mean. So once Rudden a great explanation from Zechariah's about this crop sensor issue. So lets imagine a computer monitor. Put some yellow paper across the top side and bottom. You're now seeing less of your screen. Right. The screen resolution is still the same but you seeing less of it. You've now made a crop sensor screen from your full frame screen the full image is still being shown behind T.L. a paper but you can only see the part of the image in the middle of the screen. So if you have a 50 millimeter lens on a crop sensor camera body you have to multiply the focal length with the crop factor for example 1.6 for Kanneh which is about 18 millimeter so of 50 millimeter lens on your Krop camera body has a feel that a few corresponding to 80 millimeter on a full frame camera. The lens is still 50 millimeter. It hasn't changed optically but on a camera with the crop sensor you're just seeing less of that field a few. So this is important to know if you want to get for example a wide angle lens. Let's say you want to get the 35 millimeter focal length lens onto your crop sensor camera which lens do you have to buy exactly a lens with a 24 millimeter focal length because 24 multiplied with 1.6 is about 35 Nikon Canon Sony and Pentax all these different crop factors. But in general you get a similar focal length in the end. So this was a short Digital Photography 101 which is crucial to understand. I want you to succeed as a concert photographer and therefore it's necessary to know the basics if you are aware of certain things at the start. It will help you avoid wrong decisions when buying your future camera equipment. So let's have a look at some other important points in buying your first. He has a large camera cameramen a fracture. There are different cameramen and factors such as Nikon Canon Fuji Sony Pentax and that is if you're a tech junkie. Go ahead and read all the reviews and reports on the web. I'm sure you will successfully procrustean aid for the next month reading thinking discussing and rethinking the choices over and over again. If you have too much time on your hands joined in I converse can and were on the Internet if that's what makes you happy. But I warn you you will lose a lot of precious energy in useless fights with guys who have an ego problem. So my honest answer is the camera brand does not matter if you want to start as a concert photographer right now go to your nearest local camera store hold an icon in your hand hold the canon in your hand and ask to see a Sony or whatever other brand you're excited about. Which camera body fits best in your hands. I can line up amazing photographers who shoot Nikon and they can do the same with photographers who shoot Canon. So it's not about the brand a camera system only has one purpose to collect light and record an image. That's it. So there's no magic involved and all camera systems work along the same lines. So as I mentioned before Nikon and Canon other market leaders and offer the greatest variety of lenses. So you can't go wrong with choosing one of these two brands megapixels. The first thing a lot of people notice when checking out new cameras other megapixels the resolution of a camera sensor is expressed in megapixels and reflects the number of pixels in the sensor. So basically the higher the megapixel number the higher the resolution and the better the details in the final image. This allows you to crop your image and still get decent quality enough to print your picture. However the tradeoff is that these files can be huge in size and will cost you a lot of storage space on your desk. A thirty five megapixel profile from a Nikon the 800 will be about 50 to 60 megabyte each for. So unless you want to print enormous detailed prints the megapixel issue plays a minor role. Most of it is that our cameras is available today have 16 to 24 megapixel sensors which is really enough to get some picture quality ISO. As previously discussed the ISO capability of your camera is key in concert photography. Depending on your budget. Try to buy a crop sense that these are camera with the maximum ISO setting of at least 6400. You will be faced with low light conditions onstage and therefore need the option to set high ISO values. Remember the higher the ISO setting on the camera divorcement the camera sensor will become. Which will lead to higher noise levels in your photos frames per seconds. The frame rate of frames per second is the frequency at which the camera captures unique images. So let's say the camera has four frames per second. This means that you will be able to take four pictures as second. This might be a criteria you want to look for. If you're also going to capture sports events for concert photography the frames per second is a minor topic and almost all entry cameras should provide you with a good frame rate option and video. Most new cameras have the ability to shoot video. If you're planning on getting a used camera body then you will find cameras around which don't have video capabilities. So just make sure if you want to shoot video that you get the right model to suit your needs for concert photography you don't need the video capability of the camera because filming a concert is a totally different story and the video guys have even more restrictions. Then we as a concert photographer should get a new or used camera body you might think. So this depends on different factors. If you get a new camera body then you'll get a manufacturer's guarantee for at least one year. If there is a problem you just send it for service and you either get it repaired or receive a new one. If you buy a used camera body on e-bay most of the time you won't get a guarantee which is slightly risky but you might get a great deal on an old used full frame body. So if you plan to buy a used camera body make sure the model has the ISO capability you're looking for six thousand four hundred is a good value. And take a close look at the shutter count every shot in the camera has a specific number of times it can be used once. This number is reached. The camera only to serve is basically if the used camera body you're looking at was used on a daily basis in the studio for some years. You might have to replace the shutter soon and appropriate for the number which can be attained before replacement is due. It's about 150000.