Really, it’s not. It’s the *quality* that is important. Which is why when we last bought camera equipment, we threw money (about $7,000) to the photo people and bought this.
Yes, it’s a crappy pic, I took it with my camera phone. Well, how can you take a photo of the camera with the camera? Doh! It’s a Canon d10 camera body (quite old now, they’re onto the d30 now I think) but the more important part is the L series lens. I can’t explain why it is important, it just *is*. It enables me to take some incredible pics. It is the heaviest thing I’ve ever carried. You need to go into training to take this to the zoo for a day, I’m telling you. It’s not easy to carry it around.
However, it is *worth* carrying it around because you get some incredible pics. I’ve got like 10,000 of them on this computer. I can’t even dig through them to pick out the great ones, there’s too many and I have chores to do.
But I’ll let you in on a little secret. When I’m taking my photos of the day, I hadn’t been using this lens. It was just too heavy to get started with. I wanted to get into the habit of taking them often, and plenty of them, and I knew the bigger lens would get in the way of that. So I’ve been using a much smaller one. And getting very nice results, even if I do say so myself.
All that changed on the 2nd of December, when I finally decided it was time. I’ve been using the big lens since then. You can see all my pics here.
Now I hear you guys all going “But why did you spend so much money?” – We’d had 5 digital cameras over the years, none of them worth less than $2,000, and none of them comparing even slightly with this one. We finally had learnt the lesson – If you are going to do something, do it properly. Don’t mess about. Invest wisely. It’s worth it. Even if you have to put it on the credit card. Life is short. Spend it while you can.
You’re so right about choosing a good camera. Although I didn’t have quite the same budget when I got my latest camera, I haven’t once regretted getting my Dimage Z1, which came with a free* 256MB SD card. It’s got about the same equivalent zoom as your glass there (38-380mm), and a lot of the features I wanted. The only downside is that some photos end up having a bit of purple haze in them reflected off of objects. I have to say that if I were to upgrade cameras now, I’d probably go for the Canon S3IS – 6mp with 12x zoom and image stabilisation, for about $3-400 or so.
*Actually, the SD card was priced at $72.99 {scary considering that nowadays you can get a 1GB card for $24.99}, but in combination with a $100 gift certificate and buing the two items together, I wound up paying only $301.94 for both items (and I got free shipping, a savings of $7.35).
Wow – that’s… intimidating. And it’s not just the size (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, knowwhatImean?)
I just clicked through to the picures, and man, those are beautiful. Worth every penny (easy for me to say since it wasn’t my pocket, but still) :)
ooh – lovely! I know what you mean about spending the money wisely…I just get so frustrated with the constant evolution. It’s a good thing, but my 1 year old camera is now so out of date!
Wow! That is some camera!
And pic 0212 is my fave. It’s stunning.