Nikon | The beginning of a beautiful friendship

I am in no way a camera or lens expert, however, after much research, here is what it all comes down to… I have chosen to stick with Nikon 🙂  Two years ago my hubby gave me my first digital DSLR as an anniversary gift, a Nikon D5000 with it’s 18-55mm kit lens. I was thrilled!  Before this, I had a manual film FM10 SLR which I don’t have anymore.  I was excited that my new digital camera could do all the work for me and take better shots than a regular point and shoot, or so I thought.  It wasn’t until I started to look into family, children and even wedding photography that I started to see that going back to manual was the best thing, so the learning began.  I started to practice, practice and practice everything I could about ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed.  It did get a bit frustrating at first, as I am mostly a visual learner and reading about it was not much fun.  But reading, along with the practice has paid off- at least I think so 😉 –  All the images displayed on the bog until now, with a few other images on future posts, have been been shot with my D5000 and 50mm 1.4 lens, which I LOVE by the way. 

It wasn’t until recently that I started to get the tickle to upgrade my camera, yes, I would see that most of the photographers I follow shoot with Canon and THAT made me wonder if I should switch brands, I mean, somehow it just seems more popular.. augh!  Well, I am one indecisive girl.  I googled Canon vs Nikon I don’t know how many times, and came to see that really, BOTH are very good brands and it mostly comes down to personal preference.  So, with that said, why did I stick with Nikon? well, for one, I’ve always shot with Nikon and never had any issues with it and I also noticed that Nikon did consistently come on top for its low light and focus capabilities with low light photography, which I tend to gravitate towards.  I have to say, shooting with my Nikon 50mm 1.4 made my D5000 create wonders, but my new D700 paired with the same lens is AWESOME!  The new camera is much heavier, so I am going to get quite an arm-hand-wrist workout!

I’ve been patient about upgrading and adding gear, I mean, this is not chump change we’re talking about and getting into debt is definitely NO fun.  I really liked what photographer Jasmine Star wrote on this article here  “We profited very little from our first wedding, but we immediately set up a savings account. The profit we made from our first few weddings and the money I made as a second shooter helped us buy my first Apple computer in the summer of 2007 (I used a 12-inch laptop and an external hard drive up until that point) and invest in my first website around that same time. As we slowly started booking weddings, the profit was used to buy a set of gear for JD (one lens at a time), then used to buy backup gear. Until we could afford what we wanted, we rented.
I think that’s the point of this post: Try not to be concerned with owning the nicest gear or getting into debt to build an empire on a sandy foundation. I see new photographers jumping in the deep end (and buying a ton of gear on a credit card) with the hope that it’ll work…and I believe it can, but I need to point out the importance of making smart decisions and understanding the complex relationship between creating photographs and running a business. To start a photography business, you’ll need to own a basic set-up, but until you begin booking clients consistently, it may be wiser to rent lenses to practice (which I did) and when needed for a photo shoot (which I did).  With this said, I think borrowlenses.com will be my new best friend 🙂