Camera & Lenses
What camera equipment do you use? One of the top 3 questions for many beginner & amateur photographers (sometimes even professionals). We all love gear. I love gear. You love gear.
From the start of this new journey, I had researched many nature and travel photographers and I too wanted to know what gear they used in the field. Mostly, I just wanted to know what I absolutely needed to get started. Many articles talked about just using what you already own at the moment and to focus more on learning the basic skills, putting in the practice and becoming comfortable with your gear. That all sounds great and relieving right? It is, until you get that one new piece of equipment… then you get infected with THAT syndrome…it is called GAS! Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Beware, it is definitely contagious.
What’s in your gear bag, Martha?
Camera bodies.
Lenses.
Olympus M. Zuiko lenses I use include:
- ED 45mm ƒ/1.8 for street, portrait and low light photography
- ED 12-40mm ƒ/2.8 PRO good all purpose. If I could only use one lens, this is it.
- ED 40-150 ƒ/2.8 PRO is fantastic for portrait, some wildlife and telephoto landscape.
- ED 75-300mm ƒ/4.8-6.7 is a super telephoto for wildlife, moon, and landscape.
Canon Lenses that are used:
- EF 50mm ƒ/1.4 USM for street and portrait
- EF 28-135mm ƒ/3.5-5.6 IS USM is also a good travel/all purpose lens.
- EF 16-35mm ƒ/4L IS USM for urban and nature landscapes.
- Tamron SP 90mm ƒ/2.8 Di Macro is a dedicated macro lens but a great for portraits as well.
- Lensbaby Velvet 56mm ƒ/1.6 is a fun macro lens, but it too, can be used creatively for portrait and street photography.
Difference between a mirrorless and DSLR camera ?
Olympus OMD EM 1. This is a micro 4/3 framework, which means the aspect ratio of the sensor and image size is 4:3. In other words, the sensor size is 2x smaller than that of a full-frame camera such as the Canon 5D. And because of this, the Olympus lenses have an effective focal length that is 2x the focal length of the lens or a crop factor of 2x. For example, an Olympus 45mm lens is equivalent to a full-frame lens of 90mm. It is also a mirrorless camera design. Since there is no mirror or pentaprism, the camera body is smaller and lenses tend to be much smaller and lighter than the DSLR cameras as in the Canon 5D. I use it primarily for street, travel and landscape photography.
Canon 5D III (DSLR). I wanted a full frame camera thinking that at some point I might want to print larger prints. One of the very first cameras I owned was a Canon Rebel, so I was familiar with the operations of this manufacture. This is a full-frame 35mm camera and its aspect ratio is 3:2. Full frame cameras tend to be a bit beefier thusly a bit more heavy than the mirrorless cameras. I use the Canon mostly for landscape and macro/close up photography.
Confused or curious about any of this gear? Let me know in the comments –
Now on to the supportive gear …