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Save Money:
Read This Before You Buy A New Camera Or Lens
Do You Really Need The Latest Equipment?
Read This Buying Guide.

NOTE: While I am a PIXIQ photography expert, I am also a consumer expert. I have written three books (my last book, Cheaper, was published by Random House), been interviewed by ABC TV's 20/20 and the Wall Street Journal and also authored a newsletter for fifteen years (savvy-discounts.com). Buying a camera and camera equipment is a consumer decision, so here is my advice.

When telephone answering machines first came out I paid the equivalent of $600 for one. Today that machine would cost $30 and make what I bought look primitive. Yet at the time I needed an answering machine to accept calls when I was out on jobs as a freelance photographer -- so while expensive, this device made me money because I had a specific need for its use.

I cite this example because it illustrates several things: that the price for technology drops dramatically over time -- but that if you really need something and know how you will use it, then it is a good consumer decision to take the plunge and buy at the going price.

In another example of how dramatically prices fall in the audio visual area, in 1998 I bought my first Casio digital camera that sold for $500 but now would sell for $50 or less. And last Christmas my wife and I bought a medium large LCD TV for less than $300, a size that would have cost $1000 or more just a few years earlier.

The point is this: audio visual consumer goods tend to get cheaper, better and smaller as time goes on. The longer you wait, the less you will pay. So don't be in a hurry to buy unless you have a real need.

"Never forget that all the great photographs in history were made with more primitive camera equipment than you currently own."
Brooks Jensen

WHAT IS THE BEST NEW EQUIPMENT FOR YOU?

SOOO...Before you buy a new camera or new lens or any camera equipment, for that matter, ask yourself these questions:
== Do I have a specific need for this equipment? Do I know how I will use it? Will it provide me with capabilities that I find I am lacking? Do I really need the latest Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax or Leica?

Digital photography is changing rapidly as we speak. Just about every month there is an announcement of a new camera with more megapixels, for example. This means that when you buy the latest, greatest and newest, it will be outdated almost from the moment you buy it.

"This is the same problem I have with digital photography. The potential is always remarkable. But the medium never settles. Each year there is a better camera to buy and new software to download. The user never has time to become comfortable with the tool. Consequently too much of the work is merely about the technology. The HDR and QTVR fads are good examples. Instead of focusing on the subject, users obsess over RAW conversion, Photoshop plug-ins, and on and on. For good work to develop the technology needs to become as stable and functional as a typewriter."
Alec Soth

Here are examples of good reasons for buying a new camera or equipment:
== You like to shoot in low available light and need a new camera with higher ISOs. Also your new camera will produce less noise under low light.
== You need a DSLR with more megapixels because you want to print large blow ups.
== You want a new zoom lens because it will make taking photos easier and faster when on assignment.
== You want a new camera with an Optical Image Stabilizer because you need to shoot handheld.

TIP #1: Many complete camera manuals are online as pdf files at the website of the camera manufacturer. When you are seriously considering a new camera, download the manual and read through it to make sure that this device has the features you want.

TIP #2: Always look for and read the specifications sheet (or 'spec sheet') about any camera you are considering. Often crucial information is listed there that is not in the manual -- such as the range of shutter speeds, apertures, etc.

THE EQUIPMENT TRAP

"The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it."
Edward Weston

"People are under the illusion that it's easy...Technically, it is complex. You have a million options with equipment to distract you. I tell my students to simplify their equipment."
Brett Weston

Do you really need a new camera or a new lens or a new flash? Maybe not. Instead of equipment hopping, it makes photographic, artistic, and financial sense to thoroughly master what you already own and only then, when you are certain you need a new capability, buy new equipment.

SOOO....before you start looking for new equipment ask yourself these questions:

• Have you tried everything your present camera will do -- have you read the manual cover to cover and tried all the features?
• Have you looked at the 'spec sheet' -- so that you know the speed of your built-in flash or the slowest shutter speed possible, for example?
• Have you taken photos at the highest ISO in low light?
• Have you mixed the built-in flash with available light?
• Have you turned on the Image Stabilization (IS) and shot handheld at a slow shutter speed?
• Have you put the camera on manual and changed the settings yourself?
• Have you looked at all the EXIF data for a number of your photographs.

"Keep this in mind the next time you are tempted to think that your creative output would be doubled if you just spent the rent money on a better camera. Better you should spend a fraction of that total on a few more photography books so you can study the images therein to better use the camera you already have."
Frank Van Riper

My advice is this: If you really want to expand your photographic ability, buy a book or two and study the photography carefully.

"Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner."
Author Unknown

"Leica, schmeica. The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to see."
Ernst Haas

SPECIFIC STEP-BY-STEP CONSUMER ADVICE

Read my step-by-step consumer advice about buying cameras from my second book on digital photography (The Everything Digital Photography Book) -- reprinted by a website owned by the New York Times
What To Look For In A Digital Camera
Buying The Digital Camera That's Right For You

"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head."
Henri Cartier-Bresson

NOTE:See a list of my other articles here at PIXIQ. www.pixiq.com/contributors/rick-doble

For more about my approach to photography see my book: Experimental Digital Photography.

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