Professional Grade Photography Gear for an Affordable Price!
Investing in new camera equipment is an exciting leap to take, but for some it can be nerve wrecking. (There are so many factors to be considered when researching electronics.)
For those of you who don't know much about me, I've been a professional photographer for about 6 years now. Although I currently don't have the newest or most expensive set up on the market, I can only tell you about how much I've fallen in love with my gear.
Whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or professional yourself, I can assure you that if you're looking for a hot new set up or even just some back up gear, these products are going to over deliver for you every single time.
Every photographer needs their trusty steed. One that is sturdy and they can rely on to get the job done! When I started out, my first camera was a Canon T3i. For a new photography beginner back in 2010, this crop sensor DSLR was the perfect fit for a 16 year old. One of the biggest things you'll learn in photography is to not worry about the camera body, but rather put all of your money into your lenses. (But we'll go over that inside another blog post!)
At the time I had switched my major to photography in college, my university was teaching our classes on the Canon 5Dmarkiii, a professional grade full frame camera. I later upgraded to this to help enhance my skills to better my career.
This was a great camera for the time I had used it, however my brother who is a videographer introduced me to a whole new world of cameras when he introduced me to the Sony Alpha series.
I couldn't believe there was a mirrorless full frame camera on the market that was not only smaller and lighter than the Canon Mark series, but it also had built in stabilization and shot in 120fps for video. I knew I had to get my hands on one of these camera bodies as a back up camera, but I'll tell you what.... it quickly became my forefront camera and pushed my Canon to second place.
This Sony camera I am talking about is the Sony A7iii camera body.
Though it's a few years old now and new models have come out since, I still fall more and more in love with this camera every time I use it. Just for the body itself, without a lens, it's going for about $1,698.00. Trust me when I tell you, it's worth every single penny.
A bit of the specs on it:
Advanced 24.2MP BSI full frame Image Sensor w/ 1.8X readout speed.
15 stop dynamic range, 14 bit uncompressed RAW, ISO 50 to 204,800. Compatible with Sony E mount lenses.
Can be connected via Bluetooth with smartphones featuring (as of the date of release)- Android (Android 5.0 or later, Bluetooth 4.0 or later), iOS (Bluetooth 4.0 or later) - I love this option.
Up to 10fps silent or mechanical shutter with AE/AF tracking.
Battery life (Still Images): Approx. 610 shots (Viewfinder) / approx. 710 shots (LCD monitor), battery life (Movie, continuous recording): Approx. 200 min (Viewfinder) / Approx. 210 min (LCD monitor) - I can really rely on these batteries and not worry about them suddenly dying out on me.
693 phase detection / 425 contrast AF points w/ 93 percent image coverage. Focus sensor: Exmor R CMOS sensor.
In the box: Rechargeable battery (NP FZ100), AC adapter (AC UUD12), shoulder strap, body cap, Accessory shoe cap, Eyepiece cup, Micro USB cable. Metering type: 1200 zone evaluative metering.
Maybe you don't know what some of these specs mean...that is okay! The important thing is that you know that I love this camera and I would 10/10 recommend it to anyone in the same way you'd give the shirt off your back for a stranger in need.
It is important to note that the price point on this camera only reflects the body of this camera - without a lens attached. With that being said, I'd like to recommend a few lenses for you to choose from when purchasing your camera set up.
The first lens I'd like to recommend is a great starter lens for the beginner. There is a catch phrase photographer's tend to use, and it's called, "The Nifty Fifty." - Referring to the fixed 50mm lens. The reason we call it, "The Nifty Fifty," is because the focal length of this lens is fixed at a 50mm, which is a decently zoomed focal length. The reason it's "Nifty," is because of it's fixed zoom, if you're shooting a portrait, this lens allows you to stand a farther distance away from your subject while still achieving a close up shot. For beginner photographers, this lens is a good tool because your subject won't feel like you're too close to them when taking their photo and it allows for over all comfortability between both the photographer and the model.
I'm going to link you to a 50mm 1.8 lens. The 1.8 refers to the F-stop on the camera. I'll teach you more about F-stops in a later post, but for now, all you need to know is that it lets a lot of extra light into your lens which can allow you to shoot in darker settings, shoot at a lower ISO so you'll have less grainy images, and also can produce some great boca in your photography. This is such a great starter lens, I can't wait for you to try it out!
Check out the "Nifty Fifty" lens here:
The next lens I'd like to recommend is very similar to the 50mm, great for portraits and great for up close product shots. It's an 85mm. It's focal length is just a bit more zoomed than the 50mm, and so it's boca capabilities are going to look really nice when photographing objects up close!
Check out the 85mm lens here:
I recommended two great lenses that are going to hit your portraits and product shots out of the park, but now I'm going to recommend a zoom lens in case you'd rather have a more versatile lens that allows for you to just "point and shoot."
In this case, I'd like to introduce you to the 18-105mm F4 lens. I think you'll enjoy that when zoomed all the way out, you'll be able to fit a very wide angled shot in your frame. Likewise, when zoomed all the way in to 105mm, you can really catch some good action from far away while you're on the go!
Check out the 18-105mm F4 lens here:
To view and learn more about purchasing other lenses, click here!
Now that you've picked out a starter lens for your SonyA7iii, you're going to need a solid SD card to store you photos onto!
I recommend this 128gb memory card:
The reason for a 128gb card? Go big or go home, am I right?! - The real reason is because I like to dabble in video as well, so the more memory available that I have for storage, the better! Plus if you've got more than one gig a day, or even in a week, you won't have to worry about running out of storage quickly.
***It's important to note - when buying memory cards, look for the "Class 10" symbol on your card. (It looks like a big C with the number 10 inside of it.) Also, the higher the number "MB/s"means a faster processing speed. Both of these factors will ensure you with a high quality memory card you can trust.
Now if you're a beginner, one battery that comes with your camera may be enough since you won't be shooting so often, but for the intermediate or professional photographer, I know you're going to need spare batteries.
Spare batteries are tricky. You might ask yourself, is it really worth it to pay so much for a name brand battery? - The short answer, is yes.
At least for one of your spare batteries, it's good to have - because you know it's going to last the full amount of time after being fully charged and ultimately you need gear you can rely on and gear that's going to lightly wear and tear on your camera body.
Here is a link to a high quality spare battery:
But also, here is a link to a separate charger that comes with two spare batteries. (These batteries are off brand, however I own them along with the spare name brand and they have honestly done a great job for me so far. They definitely don't last as long as the name brand battery does though. I mostly bought it for the spare charger because otherwise you have to charge your camera batteries in your camera plugged into a wall. Plus this "Power Extra" brand had great reviews compared to any of the other off-brand battery chargers.)
Wow, you are off to a great start! If you weren't a professional yet, with all this gear recommendation, you're well on your way!
If there's one final thing I could recommend to you, it would be to purchase an external hard drive. The one thing you don't want to do is flood your computer with big photo and video files and find out your computer can't handle it and runs out of space.
You'll have to decipher on your own how much space you really need for storage. For a beginner, 2TB is probably plenty. I own a 4TB (4,000GB of space) and it's been amazing because my RAW photo and video files are so big and I take so many of them. It's 2021 and I've been going strong with thousands upon thousands of files since 2017 and it's so worth it.
Here is a link to a Lacie 4TB hard drive:
I thought this one was nice because it comes with a really cute case for easy travel and extra protection, I'll be honest with you, I wish I would have found this back when I purchased mine! haha!
I love Lacie though because it's heavy duty and shock resistant. I've had so many cheap external hard drives go corrupted because I've bumped them around too much and as a result, lost all my footage from over the years. Don't repeat my mistakes, seriously invest in this hard drive and try your best not to drop it or let it get bumped around...though if it does, this hard drive has better odds of withstanding the beating!
It also has come to my attention that Lacie has come out with a new hard drive that is water resistant, up to 3M drop resistant, and has a 5-year data recovery warranty. If you're one of those wanna-be's who like having the newest gear on the market, here you go! (It appears it only goes up to a 2TB though.)
Well my friends, that about wraps it up for setting you up with a solid and very professional photography starter kit!
I hope you enjoyed reading and learning along the way about each of the individual pieces of gear and I hope you will look forward to learning more about how to operate your gear in the next posts!
I could go on and on about offering up camera accessories, so if you'd like to take a look at those in case you'd like to add anything to your photo package, you can check that out here!
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