BrittanyMakes

Hello! I’m going to touch on a subject today that I’ve never talked about before – my camera equipment.  Shocking! I know! I feel like camera talk and photo tips has become some big secret in blog land, like 3 or so years ago we were all talking about it, all teaching each other new tips and tricks. It was great! But now it’s either old hat – someone already talked about this already – or we’re all so focused on our own photography skills we don’t stop to think about other folks who might just be getting started. Just an observation of mine.

Spoiler alert: I don’t have any crazy secret photography tips, it’s been a LOT of trial and error over the years. I am absolutely no pro with my camera so take all this with a grain of salt that what works for me might not be what works for you. OK? Let’s go!

I haven’t yet shared my goals for 2015 (more on that soon!) but one of them is to take better photos. I think I take OK photos, but what I mean by ‘better’ is take more well thought out, well planned photos. Since I have a day job (preparing financial statements, woohoo!) I find that I’m always chasing sunlight on the weekends. I get extremely caught up in the amount of light in a day, sometimes it causes arguments with the mister, sometimes it makes us late to dinner dates… I’m making a huge effort (starting now!) to better time manage, plan & set up my photos in advance, and overall just stress about it less. If I can’t get the picture taken for some reason, I have to let it go. It’s a juggling act of planning and time management; the more I plan ahead the happier we all will be.

Alrighty! Back to the equipment discussion. The other part of my “taking better photos” goal is to up the ante on my equipment. I actually have to thank Santa (aka my dad!) for this one. I asked Santa for a wide angle lens, and the little elves in the workshop delivered! What’s funny, I’ve only purchased one lens for myself (this one) the other two (which I’ll get to momentarily) my dad bought me! He’s so awesome! Thank you dad! If it weren’t for him I would be taking pictures with my crappy iPhone.

My first camera was a Nikon D3000. I have no preference between Canon or Nikon, I think we were in Costco one day and we just grabbed it. Let me tell you up front, soon after I purchased the camera I regretted not doing more research on what camera I actually needed. You may think all you need is an entry level DSLR to get your photo game rolling, but what you didn’t know is the lesser expensive camera bodies typically do not have auto focus motors, which means if you want specialty lenses, you have to seek out lenses with auto-focus motors built in (which are more expensive). A lot of legit lenses are manual focus (which most of the time means the lens will use the auto-focus motor in your body to function). Avoid the big old headache of spending more money on lenses for a lesser quality body and just get the better camera body.   Oh, and I recommend not buying a camera kit (the camera body + kit lens all-in-one package).  Kit lenses are junk. Buy the ‘body only’ on Amazon and the lenses you want separately. Trust me, once you get a specialty lens you’ll never use the kit lens again.

My camera

I had the D3000 for a year and upgraded to the D7000 (I think the D7100 is the most current body, same thing as mine just released a year or so later).  I love my camera! Is it the best camera out on the market? Heck no, but it’s fancy and does incredible (enough) things.

My go-to lens

Every blogger will tell you to start out with a 50mm.  Now, I don’t disagree, but I will say if you’re going to listen to my advice and buy the body only, I say start out with the 35mm. This is the lens you will use all the time! Like the 50mm, the 35mm is a fixed focal distance lens (Macro lens), meaning it doesn’t zoom in or out, but the focal distance is actually much closer to reality than the 50mm. This lens offers practically the same minimum aperture to get those beauty shots with the ability to fit more in each photo. All of my kitchen photos were taken with a 35mm f1.8.

My Beauty Lens

I like to say the 50mm lens is every blogger’s secret weapon.  The 50mm f/1.8 is only like $100. I would absolutely recommend, if you can, to throw in a few extra bucks to get that f1.4. The wider the aperture, the better! But the f/1.8 will do the trick just fine.  Natural light photos turn out absolutely beautiful with this lens. The bokeh (the blur in the background) is so soft. It’s surprising what this inexpensive lens can do.  I will say, however, I only like to pull this lens out for specific shots: ‘beauty’ shots, tight shots, up close and personal shots with gorgeous blurring in the background.

My Wide Angle

This is my new toy! I am so crazy excited about this lens. It’s an off-brand Nikon lens, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8. You should know, there is a newer model of this lens, an AF-S lens (has an autofocus motor built in) but after digesting all the comments the autofocus motor in the new one falls just short of the object in focus, the ‘old’ model works with the motor in the camera body (which is more reliable anyway). So, better lens for a little less money!

Our house is a bit on the small side (thank you pricey California!) and I was having such a hard time really getting the full view of each room. Now that we’ve taken walls down in our living and dining room, I really needed a lens that would do the space justice. I’ve played around with this lens for about 2 weeks now and I absolutely love it. I can take pictures of my entire bathroom! My full bedroom! The baby’s room! All with minimal distortion. I hate seeing photos taken with wide angle lenses get all wonky in the corners. Here’s a picture of our kitchen with the wide angle:

There you have it! Like I said, I honestly don’t have any secret game-changing tips on taking photos. There are a ton of photo advice blog posts out there.  I would be happy to share with you the ones I found useful and what my process is if you’re interested, just let me know! I just don’t want to bore you if you already know what you’re doing :)