Calling all Photography nerds!

My phone

 

Getting into photography is like buying a stock Tacoma. First you wish you had a lift and you get it, then you want bigger tires and you get them,
then you need a bed-rack so you do that, now you want to change out the grill ...

I use Nikon stuff. It is very good some would say as good or better than Canon but the price is way less than Canon.
Sony makes good stuff too.

It's all about the Glass, and top-end lenses can run 5 figures. Darn good lenses can run close to $1,000.
Then you got DSLR or Mirrorless varieties. The mirrorless have their advantages and are more expensive with less lens options.

If you want to get into the world - buy used - you can get some nice deals out there.

 

It all depends on how into photography you want to get. The sky is the limit but you never have to spend all that, well, unless you want to. The best thing is to start out slow and not buy any new cameras or lenses until you can identify that you need something you don't already have that will make a real difference in your imaging or solve a problem that needs solving. I'm shocked at how much I spent on lenses last year and there's still an audio habit and guitar habit to feed as well.

 

*looks over at my guitar and amp that I havent touched in like 6 months*
Really need to get back on my lessons lol.

I just need something sorta small that I can take with me on hikes. Something that takes better pics than my phone. Durable, probably water resistant to some extent.

 

I am 64 can't sit and play all day anymore hands giving up check this out custom shop D-35 yes it is a lefty Keep playing then play some more

 

Great sound comes out of that thing. I'm 65 and just last night asked the wife if I should just go ahead and sell my Gibson Les Paul.
My fingers don't work anymore either. I think I paid $900 for it back in '93.... she said the kids may want it but they show no interest.

 

I am hanging on as long as I can lucky for me nobody wants lefthand guitars I am actually right handed but play left hand due to accident with left hand Thats how i got LeftRight for a handle

 

Our big pandemic project was to build a home recording studio inside the photo studio, mostly for my gf who is a professional musician here in L.A. In three years of that we've done over 50 remote recording sessions for all kinds of projects from various bands, singer songwriters, tv show, movies and video game soundtracks. But it had to be done right and we had to have audio that rivaled the best studios here in town. Let's just say that it was not an insignificant investment with sound treatment panels, really great tube mics, high end digital recording interface, and most importantly, good headphones and a Genelec monitoring system. There's an upcoming tv series on Apple TV+ called Mrs. American Pie with Carol Burnett and Kristen Wiig where I recorded Gee playing a polka circa 1969 ala Lawrence Welk (she's an accordionist) for this show. A lot of our friends recorded remotely for the same project and all of them will appear in the episode we recorded for.

The side effect of having all that great recording equipment is that I would go there every day and record myself, building songs one track at a time, adding acoustic guitar, bass, electric guitar, recorded drum loops and then her playing squeeze box. With each one of these little song attempts my playing and singing has improved at rates I never thought possible and in forty years of being just a "couch" player at night, I've made more real progress in the last three years than in the last forty or fifty. Using Logic Pro, once I got over the initial hurdles, was much like using Photoshop, and the parallels are quite close. And then buying this silly little medium format digital Fuji camera last spring has sort of reinvigorated my photography as well, but that also required some specific lenses to accomplish whatever my photographic goals are at the moment.

And our recently departed icon David Crosby said once in an interview about guitars is something along the lines of:We buy great sounding guitars that make us play more so we get better at playing. That could not be closer to the truth. If you find an instrument where the sound just gets inside of you and you never want to put it down, you will play it until your fingers are too sore to go on and you will get better. For me it's this '47 Martin 000-18 which was made more affordable by a partial trade of a photo I had taken back in '87 of Harrison for Guitar Player Magazine. That guitar is finally pretty well sorted out now but it's taught me a lot about how to look at vintage instruments and I look at the three or four grand I spent on it after the purchase as part of the cost of the education. Now it's time to attend to the 911 in the garage. Ha.

 

What im currently using. Not really gonna put more money in to it until ive learned to fully play

 

A few photos of my rig. Taken on a Nikon z7ii

 

This is a noisy missed opportunity with light-pollution I shot right after work during the planetary alignment. Posting for posterity. It's handheld.

 

Back to the scene of the crime... we have liftoff

 

Osprey on the lookout .. Older pic taken with my A6600 and 70-300mm

 

That is a fantastic image.

 

A few more.

I don't regret taking an image of this Egret...


Not a great image - but a cool scene watching this crow harass this red-tailed hawk.

 

If you are just getting into photography, I would find a decent used camera body with a kit lens or something… this will give you control over settings and ability to change lenses when that time comes.
The very first thing you need to realize is that in photography, it does not matter if you have a $5,000 camera body and $5,000 in badass lenses…. if you dont have an eye for it yet, and are not familiar with exposure settings, composition, and other things that play into it, you wont get any better photos than you would with your phone.
I started photography when I was about 16 with a Nikon camera that was slightly a step above a point and shoot. I was cluless on settings and shot in Auto full time… I worked on getting an eye for composing subjects, spotting cool things to photograph, etc…. then I started diving into learning about exposure settings and all that …. I am 35 now and have done photography on and off over the years…. while I definitely know I am far advanced from where I started… I still consider myself amateur lol …. I know nothing about flash photography and studio type stuff…. but I dont really need to because thats not my style anyways.
so that is another thing, do not feel like you have to learn EVERYTHING… see what you like to shoot and learn what it takes to be really good at that. Dont be bummed out when you are not producing the quality of photos you want from the start, you most likely are not going to. It takes years.

 

Lots of good input from the posts above mine. I watched a lot of guides videos on youtube and read a bunch of articles online before making the same dive. I went with a mirrorless camera to save on weight/size when hiking since that's mainly what I use mine for as well. The more I take pictures the more I find the need for more specific tools to help aid in that.

I would suggest if you are just getting into photography and are looking for a camera shop around on B&H or other photography sites that sell used cameras and lenses. Get the feel for seeing opportunities for shots with something cheap then expand as you feel the need. Cheap gear in the right hands can take better photos than expensive gear in inexperienced hands all day every day.

I ended up going with a Sony A6000 and picked up some used lenses to fit what I was looking for. I absolutely love my A6000 and love nature landscapes so I paired the a6000 with a Sigma 16mm which has been my go to for hiking. I just picked up a used sigma 18-50mm over the winter that is smaller on the camera than the 16mm and might be my new go to for hiking. Kit lenses will get you started then expand to better lenses as you feel the need.
I am still super new to photography, less than 2 years exp but I enjoy it. Here is one of my favorites from a hike in Wyoming. (sony a6000/Sigma 16mm)



Then this was the a6000 with the kit lens

 

Nice images and a nice setup. Sporting a camera is an excellent way to get yourself out there, in the wild, in the streets, in an old building, in some gals bedroom (ooops) ... I think of it as a sport, not the bedroom part the going out with a camera part.

 

Dammnnn the sky was so clear last night out at our ranch. I could just about see Orion's Nebula with my eyes lol ...
I have just started learning about astrophotography and I figured last night would be the perfect opportunity to give it my first real shot at capturing something.... of course it was a full moon so that did not help, but they still turned out decent I my opinion for my first try at it

Orion's Belt and Orion's Nebula
Sony A7R4 - Sony 24-70 f/2.8 ... Shot at 70mm
15 images shot at 1 second, f/2.8, ISO 5000
Did an initial little bit of post on them in LR, then took them over to Photoshop and stacked them all, then did a little bit of correction there. Took the final image back to LR and did some more correction and then took that into Topaz AI to further reduce noise and sharpen.. Then back to LR for some final very slight adjustments.
I'm sure the way I processed it is not the most efficient or effective way .. but it turned out decent results


Orion's Nebula
Sony A7R4 - Sony 135mm f/1.8
15 images shot at 1 second, f/2.8, ISO 2000
Same post processing as first image.

 

That's pretty damn fantastic. If you are living in dark-sky-territory you should be getting some killer Milky Way shots as well.
I'm coming to your house with my teardrop...