[Music]
With your new camera flying through the
air, it's a good time to ask yourself,
"Why did I buy this camera?"
Was it one person or a few people on the
internet that encouraged you that this
camera was a good idea?
That this camera was near
perfect for street photography?
Then, a few weeks later they suggested an
entirely different
camera for similar reasons.
Relying entirely on camera videos on
YouTube for reviews and recommendations
can have its downsides.
If you look to people like me or any of
these people you see
in your search results,
you're relying on
quite unpredictable people.
And while you can kind of learn
everyone's personal
tastes and then how that
relates to your own personal tastes based
on their recommendations,
it can be quite hard to measure whether
someone else's recommendation is good for
you or for someone else.
The great part of this is that every
camera you see is a great camera to buy,
but the downside of this is how do you
decide which of these
cameras is the right one for you?
How do we find the perfect camera without
going through this long-winded process?
There you are, potato.
Meet Goldilocks.
She has a habit of
trespassing and taking what isn't hers,
but she can teach us a thing
or two about buying in cameras.
When Goldilocks tries out a new chair or
a new bed, she does not check the label.
She does not go on YouTube to look at
reviews of chairs or look up unboxings of
new beds and mattresses.
No, she only tries to see what she likes.
Likewise, when she tries porridge, she
doesn't even grab a
thermometer to measure temperature
or check the ingredients on the box.
She just tries everyone else's until she
figures out which one is just right.
Ignoring specs as Goldilocks does, I want
to make something clear.
If you've ever owned, driven, or even
just sat in a car before,
do you notice things such as the
acceleration, say 0-60, the torque, or
the balance of a car?
Probably not.
If you're like me, these things just kind
of happen in the background.
You might instead be noticing things like
how easy it is to connect
your phone to the Bluetooth,
or how comfortable the seats
are, how you adjust the seats,
or the frequency of the windscreen wipers
and how difficult it is to
get the perfect frequency.
I say all this because the
same is true here with cameras.
The great photographers and true
professionals rarely think about the
number of autofocus points
they have, or the precise dynamic range
or resolution of their
sensor, or unlike me,
the resolution of their EVF, which
plagues my sleep at night.
All they want is a reliable camera that
takes photos as they want when they want,
something that keeps their creative
process as uncomplicated as possible.
Almost as uncomplicated as getting
lifetime access to every
Lightroom preset, video LUTs,
and other creative
assets that I make forever.
That's right, for a one-time fee, you get
lifetime access to monthly
updates of Lightroom presets,
video LUTs, and other creative assets,
and if you don't like what you get,
there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.
You just ask, you'll get your money back.
But I guarantee, once you get into the
Megapix Skills Lifetime Access area,
you'll never want to go back.
Remember, presets look
terrible on a projector,
so go follow the link in the description
and the pinned comment,
check them out for yourself.
The easiest way to find the right camera
for you is by just
getting hands-on experience
with a whole variety of cameras.
This does not have to mean paying
hundreds of pounds just to
get your hands on a camera,
instead go into high-street camera shops.
Go in and just chat to the staff, have a
go with different cameras.
Often they will let you kind
of point it around the shop.
Some may even trust you to go out on the
street and take a few photos with it.
Another way is to rent through services
like Fat Larma or
directly from high-street places.
Alternatively, if you have some
photography friends,
you can just ask them, could I borrow
your camera for a week or so,
or even just a couple
of days to give it a go.
The important things you want to pay
attention to when you get
some hands-on experience
is the hands-on experience.
How does the camera feel in your hand?
Think about whether or not
you like the button placement.
Do you like the shutter button?
Do you like the EVF and the resolution?
Do you like the LCD screen?
Do you like its brightness?
Do you like the touch interface?
There are so many different things you
want to look out for with a camera
that are not specs on paper.
So often the specs on the paper become
abstract numbers in
the back of your mind,
compared to the things that actually you
experience day to day
when shooting with it.
Each of these
characteristics that I've mentioned
might be something that
are a make or break to you,
but something I don't
really mind, or vice versa.
EVF resolution, for
example, is really important to me,
but for a lot of people,
that does not bother them.
Try several brands,
body types and sensor sizes
till you get a good idea of what clicks
for you and the way you like to shoot.
Once we've found the brand and the camera
that suit our style,
we can start to consider the lenses we
want to use on our chosen mount.
You may not know, but there's a missing
chapter in the Goldilocks fairy tale,
and that is when she tried out an ultra
wide lens, a medium
lens and a telephoto lens.
And what did she discover?
She discovered that
35mm was the best for her.
That doesn't mean it's the
best for you, but she loved it.
Of course, I'm not Goldilocks.
Or am I?
So when I compare these different lenses,
my preferences are going
to be different to hers.
For me, it might not be that one is too
wide and the other too long.
It could be that to me, both of them are
too long and I prefer something wider,
or vice versa.
They could be both too wide.
I prefer something longer.
I often chat to photographers who have
completely different
preferences in terms of focal length,
camera body, image editing style to me.
So there is no right or wrong one size
fits all for every
single photographer out there.
If you are mainly
looking for a digital camera,
don't jump right at a
prime lens straight away.
Going for a zoom can also be massively
helpful, especially when starting out.
This will help you get a better
understanding of different
focal lengths and how they impact
your images and how they might create
these sort of images
that you like to take versus
something on the
other end of the spectrum.
If you picked up an 85mm lens for your
first lens and it turns
out you're actually an
ultra wide kind of person, that's a
difficult thing to go back on.
Whereas if you get a zoom, you can really
test out the wide end of the spectrum and
the longer end of the spectrum to then
decide which primes to invest in next.
Alongside autofocus lenses, we also have
a whole range of manual
lenses to choose from,
like vintage lenses, cinema lenses and
even these nightwalker lenses.
They've been kindly said to be...
Besides the cinema lenses that I'm
filming this particular
video with, thank you to Surui.
Surui?
Surui? Surui? Besides these lenses, the world of manual
lenses is totally
worth exploring, especially
for photography.
I'm someone who prefers shooting street
photography with vintage manual lenses.
So I recommend trying out vintage manual
lenses for street
photography, especially in digital
age where we're used to
focus by wire autofocus.
Go back to something a bit
simpler and more engaging.
The more you learn about photography, the
more you actually want
to focus on the images
you're taking rather than the camera
that's in your hand.
And for me, this has kind of meant
removing more of these
digital assist features to rely
on something that sometimes I shoot with
this that doesn't have a
battery, it doesn't have
reliable metering, it just has a manual
focus lens and a fixed ISO film inside.
And somehow, counterintuitively, this
helps me think about
images better than when I would
shoot with a digital camera.
This isn't the case for everyone, but I
highly recommend
manual lenses becoming part
of your kit.
For a full video on how to use manual
lenses with digital
cameras for street photography,
I've actually created two on this topic
that go into a lot of detail.
And don't worry, they
won't set your Nikon on fire.
May your potatoes rest in fries.