How Much Must I Spend On A Camera To Get Good Photos (PT.1)

I'm just gonna take a picture of some rocks over here .

In fact , I'm gonna take two .

But there's gonna be quite a large difference between the two .

That shot just cost £1500 .

This shot is a seven grand shot , which is I think you'll agree an awful lot of money to be spending on a camera .

So the age old question has always been .

If I spend more money on my camera , will I get better pictures ?

Well , I come down here to have a look , see what we can find out .

So you're watching me take the identical picture in identical light , identical composition , but with two very different cameras .

So is it going to affect the pictures ?

It's gonna take one more .

Here we go .

Both of these cameras are set up exactly the same .

I'm using the same focal length .

I'm using the same aperture .

I'm using the same ISO , the same white balance settings .

I've even been to the pitch set controls to make sure that the contrast , the saturation , the hue and everything else is set up identically so we can see what's going on .

I've also just changed the ISO for this shot .

I've gone from 200 to 1600 .

So let's have a little go .

I do like stacking a stone up .

It always looks cool when the light goes down a little bit and you're looking for a shot .

Go make one , right .

I've got the same thing set on here .

Take the same picture .

Focus that up there we go .

So just comparing and scrolling across those pictures .

They're the same picture , aren't there ?

There isn't a great deal of difference now .

Some are a little brighter from one camera than the other .

Now , is that the metering or is that just that this has a much better quality L CD than this one will have ?

Well , I don't know .

We're not going to find out until we get them into the computer .

The thing is , it's you who takes the picture , and I know I bang on about this a lot , but you can't just spend 7000 odd quid on a camera , see some rocks on the wall and think , Oh , that'll make a nice picture and then just kind of go like that and expect that shot to look like the one that I just took .

It's about taking care .

So if it's not gonna take different pictures , what are you spending your money on ?

And now I've got chilli .

I have to go to the car and get my coat .

So what have we got ?

This is my Nikon D 300 .

This has now been superseded by the D 300 S , which shoots video as well .

This one doesn't .

I've been shooting professionally with two of these D 300 bodies for about four years now and I have absolutely no complaints .

It is a professional camera .

Everything makes sense .

It's easy to reach all the knobs and buttons , make sense .

Got a nice big L CD on the back shoots lovely colours , nice , creamy raw files .

And the ISO performance isn't bad either .

The body on this will cost you about £1000 that ends probably about 3 to £400 .

So we're in the just under 1500 quid bracket .

This is Niko's flagship D three X .

This is a very , very , very rugged build .

It's very , very heavy .

If I was to drop that , I'd probably chip a piece out of the steps here , looking around the outside of the camera .

To me , it makes a lot of sense , and I've often found that top end professional cameras , whether it be Nick on Cannon or anyone else , are often actually easier to use than their consumer brothers .

There are only about half a dozen controls you ever actually need to fiddle with .

When you're out on a shoot on this camera , they're all on the outside .

I've got my ISO , my image quality , where I can flick between tiff , JPEG and raw white balance .

I've got my focusing modes .

I've got my metering modes on the top here .

I can flick between programme modes with that button there .

I just press it and turn the dial to go from programme auto shutter priority , aperture , priority and manual .

I've even got my exposure compensation button on the top where it's easy to get at .

I can even get into my auto bracketing with that button on the top there if I want to on my camera , I have to dig around in a menu to find that , and that is also a professional camera .

It's a good job .

I don't use auto bracketing that often on the inside .

That's really where your bucks are going .

This has got 25 megapixels versus my 12 megapixels .

Now , unless you're printing your pictures very , very big .

Indeed , it's not really going to make a lot of difference .

But I was talking to my magazine editor , Buddy Adam , score fairly recently about this .

As he says , possibly digital medium format is going to die fairly soon because the DS LRS are getting such good resolution .

Why would you want to lug around medium format if you can shoot it all into a much , much smaller camera like this ?

You've got excellent optical quality in this lens .

It's an F 2.8 lens , which means it's a very wide aperture .

We've already done a professional versus consumer lens test .

I suggest you go and check that one out to find out more about the lens element of this , but it's a professional lens .

It's a fast lens , therefore , a couple of grand for the lens .

You've got a very , very good quality , high powered processor going on inside this , which is going to be processing your files quickly .

If you're shooting JPEG , it's going to take the RAWS and turn them into J pegs for you ever so quickly , you can probably write them to the card Incredibly fast .

Great big raw files .

My raw files are about , I think , 8 to 10 mega megabytes each .

These are 25 megabytes each .

They're very , very big files indeed .

But the main thing I guess to look at is the pictures .

Now we've already seen I've taken exactly the same pictures with both cameras .

I hope I've shown you made my point that it's not the camera that takes the picture .

It's the photographer .

But all these things we've just been discussing here won't really become apparent until we look at them in the computer .

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