Hi, and a very warm welcome to Episode 179 of the Photography Explained podcast. I’m your host, Rick, and in each episode, I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details. I’m a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my podcast.
Here is the answery bit
Photography is drawing with light, and photography gear is simply the tools we use to capture that light and take photos. Photography gear can help us create higher-quality, better-composed photos. And that is it. It is that simple. Buy the best camera and lens you need and can afford, and learn how to use them properly.
But the important thing is what you point your camera at.
Right—that is my answer. Now, I will review the gear that is available to us.
You can listen to the episode here
Or keep on reading – entirely up to you!
Cameras
There are so many different cameras: DSLR camera, mirrorless cameras, full-frame cameras, cropped sensor cameras, micro four thirds cameras. And that is just the mainstream consumer cameras. But for this episode, I will restrict myself to these—and phones, of course.
What is the difference between a full-frame camera, a cropped sensor camera and a micro four thirds camera?
- A full-frame camera has a sensor size that is 36mm wide x 24mm high.
- A cropped sensor camera has a sensor that is 22.5mm wide x 15mm high. Sensor sizes vary, but they are generally around this size.
- A micro four thirds camera has a sensor which is 18mm x 13.5mm.
The three camera types have different sensor sizes, meaning they are three different systems built around the sensors. Each system has different camera bodies and lens systems.
Full-frame and cropped sensor cameras have 3:2 aspect ratios. Micro four thirds cameras have a 4:3 aspect ratio.
OK—these are the fundamental differences, but what does this all mean, and how can it help us take better photos?
Full-frame camera
A full-frame camera has a larger sensor than the other two. A larger sensor generally means more data is captured, giving potentially higher-quality photos. Full-frame cameras are generally larger, heavier, and more expensive.
I know there are a million and one variables, but these are the general differences.
But, with a full-frame camera, a 50mm focal length gives you a 50mm focal length. To make sense of this, I need to move on.
Cropped sensor camera
Cropped sensor cameras tend to be smaller, lighter and cheaper than full-frame cameras. This is the complicated bit.
Cropped sensor cameras have a crop factor of 1.5-1.6, depending on the camera manufacturer.
Take a 50mm lens, which gives a view similar to that we see with our own eyes. Well, apply the crop factor of 1.6 to that focal length, and this is what happens. 50mm is the focal length of the lens. That does not change. The crop factor is multiplied by the focal length to give the effective focal length, which is, in this case, 50×1.6=80. So, a 50mm focal length on a cropped sensor camera gives an effective focal length of 80mm.
80mm has a narrower field of view than 50mm. To get the same field of view as a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera, as in the way we see the world with our eyes, we need to divide 50 by the crop factor, which gives us 31mm. So, a 31mm focal length on a cropped sensor camera gives us the same field of view as 50mm on a full-frame camera.
A quick word on APS-C
You will find the term APS-C used for crop sensor cameras. Don’t try to apply any logic to this – APS-C was a film format introduced in 1996 where you could choose three different sizes of photos. The one called C is similar in size to a cropped sensor camera sensor.
If we got rid of the term APS-C, the world would be a better place. I have no idea why it is still used.
Micro four thirds camera
A micro four thirds camera has a smaller sensor than a cropped sensor camera and a crop factor of 2. So, a 50mm focal length on a micro four thirds camera gives an effective focal length of 100mm. To get the equivalent field of view that you get with 50mm on a full-frame camera, that is how we see the world, divide the focal length by the crop factor. Which gives us a focal length of 25mm.
Does sensor size affect depth of field?
Well, some say it does. And I say this. You don’t need to worry about it. What matters is the depth of field you get with your camera and lens for the subject you photograph. I have a full-frame camera and a micro four thirds camera, and I have never thought about this. It is an irrelevant detail to me. The depth of field I get with my Canon 6D is what it is, the same with my Olympus EM5.
And I move on. I have bigger things in my life to worry about!
Oh yes, it is depth of sharpness, not depth of field.
What does this all mean?
It means that the sensor size directly affects the focal length you get, impacting what you are taking photos of—or not. See, it does not matter. We know that a micro four-thirds camera has a crop factor of 2, so if I want to get a focal length of 17mm, as I do with my go-to Canon lens, the Canon 17-40mm, I need a focal length of 8.5mm. No sweat; Olympus has a lens that covers this.
So, it doesn’t matter which is good or bad news. Good as in it really doesn’t matter, bad as in this hardly narrows things down. I say it doesn’t matter, as in what matters is that you are actually taking photos, creating new stuff, regardless of the size of the camera sensor.
Hopefully, you get the idea.
How do I choose a camera for me?
Price will be a factor, as will a brand that you might prefer, the camera’s size and weight, and the specific features of a camera. What you want to take photos of and how serious you are about your photography will also be factors, as will image quality, sensor quality, and all that good stuff. Beyond that, there are so many variables that it is hard to say much more.
I use a Canon 6D Mk 1. This camera dates back to 2014. This is not a badge of honour; look at me with my old camera. No, I bought the camera in 2014 and love the photos it takes. I do not need all the latest features for my photos and how I take them.
- Sure, I would love some shiny new loveliness, but will it help me take better photos? Possibly.
- Will the photos be visibly better? Possibly, meaning getting a new camera is a possibility.
- Will shiny new loveliness help me take photos I cannot get now? No.
- Will shiny new loveliness save me time? Possibly. That is why I would buy a new camera.
- Does my camera work? Yes.
- Will clients notice if I get a new camera? Probably not.
I might buy a new camera to save time and produce slightly higher-quality images.
That is my thought process.
I was going to go into what full-frame, cropped sensor and micro four thirds cameras are used for
But I am not. It just depends.
I use my Olympus camera for travel photography. The theory is that it is smaller and lighter. However, the lens that I use is a 12-40mm lens, which weighs 380 grams. My Canon 17-40mm lens weighs 500 grams. Yes, it is lighter, but will I notice that 120-gram weight saving? No, I will not. That weight difference is virtually the same as the weight of a small glass of wine.
What is important then with cameras?
Of course, all of the above, as well as how the camera is used, its handling, and its size, will influence this. Sticking with me, I much prefer the handling of my Canon 6D, but it is bigger than my Olympus EM5. I find the Olympus a bit fiddly, but that is just me.
So how do I choose a camera?
Do this: Go to a camera shop, speak to the good folk there, and ask for their help. Speak to an actual person who knows this stuff. Be clear about your budget and what you want to do with your camera. Take their advice and buy a camera from them. Don’t milk them for all the advice that you can, and then go and buy one online for the best price.
If we all do that, camera shops will disappear, and we need them.
Sure, get the best price from them—that is fine. But go into the shop with the intent to buy if you are after a camera, lens, or other bit of kit.
Lenses
There is a seemingly endless choice of lenses out there. I have three for my Canon camera: a 17-40mm, 24-105mm, and 70-200mm lens. That is it. For my Olympus EM5, I have a 12-40mm lens (effective focal length 24-80mm) and a 40-150mm lens (effective focal length 80-300mm). I use Canon lenses for my Canon camera and Olympus lenses for my Olympus camera. Independent lens manufacturers make lenses that fit the cameras made by the major camera brands.
And that is it.
When picking lenses, you have to remember the crop factor.
There are three main types of lenses
- Wide angle lenses – focal length less than 40mm ish
- Standard lenses – focal length around 50mm
- Telephoto lenses – focal more than 60mm ish
I say ish as there is no fixed point where wide-angle and telephoto lenses begin and end.
What do the different focal lengths mean?
50mm on a full-frame camera is similar to how we see the world with our eyes.
A focal length of less than 50mm gives a wider field of view, and things seem smaller and elements in a photo further away.
A focal length of more than 50mm gives a narrower field of view. Things seem larger and closer, and elements in a photo are closer together.
These effects are directly related to the focal length—the larger or smaller the number, the greater the effect.
Blimey – I am impressed with myself for that explanation of lenses.
What are different camera lens focal lengths used for?
I use a 17mm focal length for 95% of my photos of buildings. When I use my Olympus travel camera, I take 95% of my photos with the 12mm focal length. And I find that I use the ends of a zoom lens, certainly with my travel photography. I would not notice the difference if I had three lenses: 12mm, 40mm, and 150mm.
Certain fields of view suit certain subjects. Focal lengths are pertinent to what you are photographing. Here are some examples.
- 17-24mm – me and buildings – interiors and exteriors.
- 85-100mm – photos of people – this gives the most natural-looking results.
- 40-60mm – street photography – you are creating what we see, so this makes sense
- 300/ 400mm – bird in flight photography, motorsport, that kind of thing
I could list an endless number of examples, but I won’t, don’t worry.
Again, go to a shop and speak to someone. There are so many variables: cost, quality, size, weight, maximum aperture, focal length or lengths, prime lenses, and zoom lenses.
Buy the best lens that you can afford that is suitable for the photos you will take.
And think about crop factor when you are choosing a lens – this makes a massive difference.
Should you get a new lens or a new camera body?
It depends on the reason, but a lens may be the answer if you want to improve image quality.
Lens vs camera – resale values
Camera bodies devalue quickly, but camera lenses hold their values much better. Why? Cameras bodies are updated more often with new tech, meaning models become obsolete much quicker. Lenses are not replaced by manufacturers anywhere near as often, so they hold their value.
That is why we keep older camera bodies and, if anything, upgrade our lenses—this is where the big gains can be found.
Bags
Camera bags. Is there the perfect camera bag? No, there is not. Well, if there is, I have not found it. I have three camera bags, each with its specific uses.
One has all my Canon gear in it —a biggish bag with a shoulder strap and a fully opening top.
I have a smaller bag, a backpack, and the specific stuff I use on every shoot goes in that from the big bag.
The other bag has all my Olympus gear in it – it is a backpack that also serves as my hand luggage when I travel.
Again, these bags all have specific purposes.
I have bought many bags over the years, but have ended up with these three.
The important things for a camera bag are these
- It protects your gear
- You can get to stuff easily
- It works for what you do
I don’t care what my bags look like; they, like cameras and lenses, are simply tools.
Tripods
I take every photo that I can with my camera on a tripod. Why? I don’t need to worry about shutter speed, and I find that having my camera on a tripod helps me get better compositions. I use a geared head for my architectural photography work. But for my travel photography and landscape photography, I will use a ball head on a travel tripod—again, gear specific for what I am doing.
I photograph buildings, so this works for what I do. Whilst I recommend that you use a tripod, it’s no use if your thing is photographing landscapes from cliff faces, is it? Or photographing angry polar bears.
You get the point, I hope.
How do I choose a tripod?
Well, you could go to a shop and ask. And you can physically try them out and see which works for you. That is the best way. OK, you can order one online, and if you don’t like it, send it back, but we shouldn’t really be doing that, should we?
No, speak to a knowledgeable person in a shop and try some out.
Other stuff
I was going to go on about all the other stuff that you can get, but I stopped myself. Instead, I would like to refer you to the last episode and the stuff I used. The point is that you should only get gear if it will help you – I will remind you what my criteria are later.
If you would like me to discuss other gear, please don’t hesitate to let me know. We all need a memory card or 12, batteries, stuff to clean our gear with, and a camera strap or wrist strap, in my case. I covered the stuff that I use in the last episode—no need to repeat myself here.
I don’t talk about flashes and other artificial lights because I don’t use them – I use natural light. And no, this is not a cop-out; this makes perfect sense for what I do.
New vs Used
If you can’t afford new camera equipment or don’t want to buy new, consider second-hand. I have done this and never had a problem. Be sure what you want, and make sure you buy it from a safe place, and you will be just fine.
Second-hand camera bodies can save you a lot of money – lenses less so. I covered this earlier
How gear can help us take photos – 5 specific examples
10-Stop ND Filter
Imagine taking a photo of a river. Your exposure is 1/125th second at F16. Imagine reducing the amount of light by ten stops but still getting the correct exposure. The shutter speed would change from 1/125th second to 8 seconds. If my maths is correct, which there is a remote chance of.
Talking about a piece of gear transforming a photo, imagine moving water captured in daylight with an 8-second exposure. You can do this with a 10-stop neutral density filter.
Canon 17-40mm lens
The Canon 17-40mm F4L Lens is my go-to lens. I use the 17mm focal length to photograph building interiors and exteriors. 17 is wide but not so wide to deceive or distort. Perfect.
Tripod
I was photographing a snooker room. I wanted the lights on over the table, but the lights in the rest of the room were dimmed. I wanted to recreate the true feel of a room, so I put my camera on a tripod and used the self-timer, and the problem was solved. A tripod easily overcomes low-light issues. This is an example of why I do not use additional lighting; I capture what is there.
Grey card
I use a grey card. I include it in a photo, take photos using Auto White Balance, then when I am processing my images, I simply click on the grey card in the photo with the white balance eye dropper tool in Lightroom, and voila—white balance is done. It saves me time and helps me get the white balance right.
Loupe Viewer
I am quite old. My eyes are not what they were, and the LCD screen on my Canon 6D is not the best. Well, it is a 10-year-old camera. So, the loupe viewer is a thing that attaches to the back of the camera and covers the LCD screen. It shades the screen from the sun, for those rare days here in England where it is sunny! And it also magnifies the LCD screen. This helps me to get the best compositions that I can.
This is how I use gear to help me to take photos.
The talky bit
Let’s not overthink this. There is a real danger of us overthinking gear.
Full-frame/ cropped sensor/ micro four thirds – does it really matter?
The honest, short answer is no. It does not really matter—not as much as people say, not as much as you might think. They are different but doing the same thing—capturing the light. There is no right or wrong camera or type of camera. What you have is what you have.
What matters is that you learn how to use your camera and go out and take photos with it. People seem always to be searching for the best cameras—I am using a 10-year-old Canon 6D.
You can take great photos with a great camera, but you can also get rubbish photos with a great camera.
What matters is what you point your camera at and how you take the photo, both composition-wise and technically.
Why so much gear? Why all these options?
I covered this in the last episode. If we consider photography gear as tools that we use to take photos, we start with basic equipment. We might need more features or a higher-quality image capture capability as we progress. This is when we upgrade our camera gear and lenses. We buy bits of gear that we need to do a specific job. This is how we progress.
A professional photographer who spends £/ $/€10,000 on a lens has spent all that money for a very good reason: That lens is needed.
That is the point—only buy or upgrade gear when you need to. If you stick to the main camera brands, you will struggle to buy a bad camera these days.
I said earlier – will clients notice if I get a new camera? And my answer was this – probably not. We have to remember who we are taking photos for.
Why does it not really matter what camera you have?
I did a commercial shoot with an Olympus camera and issued the photos to a client for whom I had done loads of work before, all with my Canon 6D. Remember all the differences between the two systems. No one noticed. This is the reality. A different camera system, camera body, lens, focal length, depth of field, image sensor resolution, all that good stuff. And I even took the photos in JPEG format and not RAW (a mistake on my part).
But I processed them in Lightroom and ended up with pretty much identical results.
So does this stuff all matter so much?
No, it does not.
That is all I want to say here.
I’m sorry—one last thing. Buy the best gear that you need and can afford. But use that gear to its full capabilities. And concentrate on what you are taking photos of.
What if I use my phone to take photos and not a camera?
Then you have a phone and not much else. If you take photos using a phone, let me know what gear you have. Or, if you don’t have anything other than your phone, let me know. I don’t know what you do, dear listener, and I would love to share this info with everyone else. This sounds like a survey that I need to do. Yes, why not? I will work on that and announce it in the next episode.
Not having anything besides my phone is a lovely, liberating thing.
What if use a film camera?
Everything that I have said so far applies. There won’t be as much new gear as there is for mirrorless cameras and DSLR cameras, which backs up what I said about second-hand gear.
Sorry, I feel like I should be saying more film photographers, but that really is all for this subject.
What do I do?
I use a Canon full-frame DSLR with a 17-40mm wide-angle lens for my architectural photography work, and an Olympus micro four thirds camera for my travel photography. These work for me. One thing I want to say here is that I always use the lens hoods that come with my lenses. They protect the lens front element better than anything, as far as I am concerned, and block stray light hitting the lens element, causing lens flare.
I also use the self-timer built into my camera. I used to use a remote control, but I found that the simple self-timer does the job nicely for me. It also means one less piece of gear. My camera setup has been refined over the years to what it is now.
And this is what I do now.
Some thoughts from the last episode
Well, it was a very good episode, I thought. I covered everything, but there is one thing that I want to return to.
I got distracted by gear. Photography, for me, became all about the gear. I thought I needed all the gear under the sun before becoming a real photographer. And I was so so wrong. I have told you the criteria for getting new gear, which I make no apology for repeating here.
Only get more photography gear if
- The gear will help you take better photos
- The gear will help you to take photos that you cannot get with your current gear
- The gear will save you time or money
Or
- The gear you have is broken/ worn out/ about to fail.
Keep this in mind, and it will help you.
Next episode
Camera settings—how to get image capture bang on. I am done with photography equipment—I have said enough. Now it is time to talk about camera settings and how we use the gear to get the best photos that we can. So that is what you can look forward to in episode 180.
I am looking forward to this episode.
Ask me a question.
If you have a question you would like me to answer, email me at sales@rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk or head over to the podcast website photographyexplainedpodcast.com/start.
And if you want to say hi, please do – I love hearing from my listeners.
Get an email from me.
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OK – I am done.
This episode was brought to you by a homemade—wait for it—a cheese and pickle sandwich washed down with water before I settled in my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium. Still, no crisps!
I’ve been Rick McEvoy; thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast (it says here) and for giving me 27 ish minutes of your valuable time. This episode will be about 30 minutes long after I have edited out the mistakes and other bad stuff.
I hope to see you on the next episode.
Take care and stay safe.
Cheers from me, Rick
That was the podcast episode.
Want to know more?
Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.
And here is the list of episodes published to date – you can listen to any episode straight from this page which is nice.
Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Just head over to the This is my list of things to explain page of this website to see what is on there already.
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And finally a little bit about me
Finally, yes this paragraph is all about me – check out my Rick McEvoy Photography website to find out more about me and my architectural, construction, real estate and travel photography work. I also write about general photography stuff, all in plain English without the irrelevant detail.
Thank you
Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).
Cheers from me Rick
