My Story of That Last Thing I need to get or You Already Have All You Need for Happiness.

When I started taking photos for work, I had Canon EOS 1100D, which is a very basic-level cropped-frame DLSR camera, but still, you can totally take decent photos if you have a good lens in your bag… but I remember how it bugged me to go to an event and to have this shitty DSLR and everyone would have a fancy 5D and a lens with the red ring… And I felt like I really need a big heavy camera so that people would take me seriously. So I bought a second-hand Canon EOS 7D. It is a beautiful cam, but it is just a bit outdated now. And the one I had got in my hands from the hands of a wedding photographer, so it was quite well used. But it was heavy, big and respectable.

With that, I had to upgrade my tripod as well, because this camera was too heavy for the one I had. This bought tripod from Benro served me well for around 3 years, and I wouldn’t have known something is wrong with it until the day my dear friends on my tour to Iceland kept making fun of me and my flimsy tripod…. well, at least I never dropped my camera with it. One guy on the Iceland tour with a more expensive tripod gave his Sony a swim in the salty waters of the Atlantic Ocean, and it never worked again.

But my happiness with 7D didn’t last very long, because very soon I decided that now I need a full-frame camera. This for real will take my photography to a very new level. And thankfully there was this Canon EOS 6D with WiFi and GPS that showed up on the market. It was just perfect for me at that point. It cost half of my salary, but I needed to have it. For the same reason that I needed 7D, that now was not enough for me.

I must admit that shooting with a full-frame DSLR is fun. I love it, and it makes your life easier to use 50 mm as 50 mm, not as 85 and you can fit more than one person in the frame.

The tricky part with buying full-frame cameras is that half of your lenses are good for nothing no more because they are made for cropped sensors… and now you ‘obviously’ need to upgrade your lenses as well. That is what I was doing for a while, got 24-105 as my first L lens, and didn’t love it. It works just fine, but it is a very unexciting lens. And heavy. Got 24-70 and it is bloody heavy… shoots nicely, but I had a Tamron 28-75 which is much lighter and gives you kinda same-same effect. Plus this canon lens was constantly fogging from inside in Iceland… that was a bummer. And honestly working with it is like doing a workout, but the 70-200 is the real workout. I was dreaming of buying one as my next investment, but then Fujifilm happened to me.

So I gave my 1100D as a gift to my sister along with a 50 mm lens, and she didn’t really use it and I don’t even know what happened to my beloved Canon that I started my career with. As soon as I parted with it, I realized I need something light that I can travel with or just can take with me to a party (no, I can’t shoot with iPhone, right?) …. (of course I can, but…) I bought a Fuji X100T as my put-in-the-pocket camera. It is absolutely amazing with colours, size and performance… but the lens is fixed and the battery is shitty compared to Canons.

Have played with Fuji in Dubai, and in Iceland, I loved it, so one day something happened to me and I just went to the store and bought Fuji XPro2 which was on promotion with 35mm lens. And I looooove how sharp it is, I love the details, I love that it is light and the design of it excites me as well. So I wanted to sell all my Canon stuff and become a Fuji convert, but as I have now landed a photographer job, I would like to hold on to Canon just for now to see if I can actually do it with Fuji. I am sure I can, but it is just not as fast and reliable as Canon. What I love about Canon is the speed of the response, it is just a second and it is ready to go. It is very rarely giving me a brain freeze, but mirrorless cameras tend to do that from time to time. I can also connect it fast and easy to iPad and show the clients what’s going on, while Fuji with the WiFi card takes really a while to load the photos.

It doesn’t bug me anymore to go to the event with the non-pro DSLR camera, I know that I can manage and take nice photos even with the kit lens, because I know how it works, and I can make it work.

We often fall victim to the GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) and think that the new camera or lens will unleash our creativity, but in fact, we already have all the tools. You can’t shoot with 3 cameras at the same time, so do you really need so many? And I can guarantee that some of those lenses are just gathering dust on the shelves…

I just need to repeat this last paragraph to myself whenever I feel like I neeeeeeed that just that one more lens or camera, or tool, or whatever.

Need to learn to be happy with what I have.

Peace and love,

Anna