If you want to get into photography, most people know that you will need a few pieces of equipment. A camera, obviously, a few lenses, maybe a tripod, a bag, some editing software for your computer. That's pretty much all you need, right? That is if, like me, your main thing is outdoor activities like landscape or street photography (I'm not talking about studio photographers who should be prepared to sell their first-born to get the money needed for the proper lights, screens, and whatnot).

Wrong. As any photographer who has spent more than 10 minutes on Facebook knows, you are far from done. At least according to the hundreds of companies and individuals who make a living off photographers and who must spend millions targeting their ads at gullible people like me.

I'm not ashamed to admit that over the years I have spent a good deal of money on things that I later regretted, and that a lot of it was due to my inexperience and naivity, not to mention my general tendency to not do proper research when I buy stuff. So don't misunderstand. I blame no one but myself. I'm sure the makers of the products below had nothing but good intentions to help out their fellow photographers.

So here goes: my top 5 money wasting photography purchases...

Lens Belt

At one point I fell in love with the idea of carrying my lenses in a belt around my waist like some camera gun slinger, so I ordered a belt along with a selection of lens cases that could be strapped to the belt. After several weeks the items arrived from who knows where, but most likely China. Judging from the belt, it was certainly from a place where a typical male waistline is about two thirds of what can be found on your average middle-aged Western European amateur photographer. Only by sucking my gut in to near implosion was I able to latch it. Needless to say, the subsequent photo excursion to the local forest was an unpleasant experience. Afterwards the belt was never used again, and I decided getting camera lenses out of a regular camera bag isn't such a hassle after all.

Lenses for cell phone

I should have known better. You can't attach a $10 lens to a cell phone camera and expect anything resembling a useful image. I bought a whole kit of various lenses. A fish-eye lens, a zoom-lens, and an even longer zoom-lens. The quality of the images they produced was in all three cases abysmal. I never put them on again after that first attempt. Now, if you read the description of these types of lenses on places like Amazon, they all but promise you that your cell phone will now be all the camera you'll need, and they show sample images that I guarantee were not taken with those lenses. Now, I can't rule out that if you pay a little more for cell phone attacheable lenses, and if your expectations aren't too high, you might get a decent result. But it will still be so far from what you can do with even the cheapest kit lens to a real camera, it's not even funny.

Lightroom Presets

Over time I have learned that Lightroom presets are a big industry, and for a while I was an easy target. After all, presets were part of what opened my eyes to the power of RAW files and Lightroom. So this is not a knock at presets per se, but it seems to be a way to make an easy income for many photography gurus out there. And that would be okay if presets were really a miracle cure to turn your average images into masterpieces that they are made out to be, but they are not. Notice that every time you see advertising for Lightroom presets, the example images they use are absolutely stunning landscape photos with perfect light and composition. Unless you are a world class photographer who go to the most spectacular locations on Earth, that is not how your pictures will look by applying a preset. And if you are, you probably don't need presets to make your pictures look good. And don't fall for their trick when they will sell you 2,000 presets at a 95% discount. No one needs 2,000 presets. No one can even keep track of 2,000 presets. And I guarantee that whatever the price was supposed to be without the 95% discount, it was never listed at that price, let alone worth it.

Monument

This was some sort of Kickstarter project that I supported. It was a storage device that - through AI image recognition - could automatically tag your images as they were uploaded. That sounded like sweet music to me. A device that would make the tedious task of image tagging your images a thing of the past. Boy, was I disappointed. It turned out the only way you could add images to Monument was through a cell phone app, which in reality meant that it only worked with pictures you had taken with your cell phone. Since 90% of the pictures I keep are taken with my real camera, this made it pretty useless from the get go. On top of that, it turned out the "tagging" was extremely superficial... and most of the time downright incorrect. A few weeks after setting it up, my phone app stopped uploading to it for inexcplicaple reasons. I half-heartedly tried to fix it, to no avail. Then I took it down and put it in my box of unused electronics never to be looked at again.

Picfair

Over the years I have subscribed to a number of online photo services that promised exposure, sales, not to mention fame and fortune if you would just upgrade to their paid version. Picfair is one such online service, but they are merely an example. I could have mentioned others. But unlike many other more versatile services, the whole idea with Picfair is to be a sales platform for photographers. Now, you'll probably say that my pictures just aren't good enough for anyone to buy them, and that's not an unreasonable claim. They may not be. But when, despite using pictures that according to Picfair's guidelines are in demand, and tagging them using my librarian expertise and their own tagging guidelines, they still get zero views over the course of several months, something isn't adding up. I do realize that just putting them on a photo service like Picfair isn't enough. You have to do your own leg work, too. But again... zero views. Not zero sales (well, that too). Zero views.

Conclusion

These examples of my bad investments in photography products and services should not necessarily be seen as a warning against those particular products. I'm just one person. Others may have had their life revolutionzed by the Monument storing system, or if you are not overweight like me, maybe a lens case belt has been the exact right thing for you. But it never hurts to be aware of the tactics used in marketing, and to be a little better at doing your research before you submit your credit card information.

Oh, and if you are interested in any of the above-mentioned products, let me know. I'll give you a 95% discount.

 

In the last few months I've been feeling a growing itch in my body. I've been feeling that I had somehow hit a wall with my photography. While my eye for a good motif, and my ability to capture it, kept improving, my camera was becoming the weak link. I felt that even when I did everything right, using the right exposure, the right aperture, a tripod, etc., the technical quality of my pictures - especially in low-light scenery, left a lot to be desired. I started to look for a new lens, but realized my camera's A-mount system was an obstacle. The selection of A-mount lenses just isn't very good. Besides, my old trusty Sony A33 increasingly started to feel like a beginner's camera. I felt I had moved on from the beginner stage.

To make a long story short, I itched for a new camera. I knew it had to be a Sony again, but with the more future-proof E-mount system that would, at the same time, allow me to reuse my old lenses with an adapter.

After pretty thorough research - and with the advice from my more technically adept brother - I chose a Sony A7 II. While by no means Sony's top model, it has all the qualities I can realistically hope for with my budget. And with the right lens, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to take pictures that until now I could only dream of.

The right lens, however, is still a thing for the future. My economy can only take so much camera equipment in one month... possibly year. So for now I have to make do with my old lenses and the generic lens that came with the camera. And that's ok. There are plenty of new features in the camera itself that should help improve picture quality even with the old lenses. A lot of that, however, takes practice and studying, something I haven't done much of yet. So in my first few weeks of using the camera, I can't say that I have utilized its more advanced features much, just as I haven't pushed it to its limits by doing much low-light photography or other challenging exercises.

Still, the following pictures, all taken with the new camera and with the included lens, show a lot of promise of what it's capable of.

The first one is a well-known motif: Frederiksborg Castle, a stitch of six handheld images. Nice, sharp, and crisp.

Seagulls at the harbor in Dragør during a photo excursion that I hope to write a separate post about soon. I wish the background of this shot hadn't been so messy, but I'm happy with the sharpness, achieved at only 1/160 second, in a burst of shots that made the memory card stumble to keep up.

Another personal favorite of mine from my trip to Dragør. Again, notice the lack of blur, particularly in the waving flag. And boy, was it windy that day.

The only non-handheld picture of the bunch, and again from my Dragør expedition. That's me testing the app that comes with the camera and that turns your smartphone into an advanced remote control. Awesome! I always had trouble with remote controls for my old camera. This new smartphone system just worked. And the picture? There's a crispness about it that I just don't think I could have achieved with my A33.

Next is my only attempt at low-light photography so far. Just the view from my backyard captured with a handheld shot at ISO 320 and 1/60 second. I think this demonstrates A7 II's anti-shake qualities in a big way. And the noise? There was none detectable. Definitely an improvement over my old A33.

A picture of our neighbor's beautiful cat Ollie. Here I have experimented with A7's manual focus, adjusting the focus to the cat's eyes, something that wasn't even possible with my A33. Yes, I admit, I enhanced the eyes in post-processing, but still...

One of my favorite pictures that I have taken so far, not just with the new camera, but... like... ever. I don't know if it tells a lot about the camera, but I'd like to think I couldn't have achieved quite the same result with my A33. All I know is that I had to include it here because I just hit the nail on the head with this one, if I say so myself.

Well, the days are getting longer, the beech trees will explode in green within a few weeks, life is returning to nature, people are coming out of their houses, and I will be there to document it all with my A7 II. So keep an eye on this spot. I can feel this will be an extraordinary photo year.

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