portraits

Feature image shot with the Nikon D2h | 400 ISO | f5.6 | 1/320s

There’s been a lot of new gear hitting the streets these days, so I thought I would follow up my last post with an actual shoot with a 15yr-old Nikon D2h just to see what it used to be like.

I’m very excited to see Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, and Fuji releasing some great new hardware. Even though I’m a Nikon shooter, I love the idea that the competition is pushing the tech water level higher for all of us. It’s a win-win for everyone.

But let’s take a step back for a moment from the monster megapixel, high ISO, mirrorless euphoria we have all been on and ask ourselves:

How much do we need? How many megapixels, lens resolution, high iso, and dynamic range is “good enough”?

For each of us that answer will be different. Whether you’re a serious amateur, a full-time fashion pro, or an architectural photographer, your needs are unique. For me as a wedding photographer, I need a camera with latitude—Latitude in tonal range, resolution for cropping, and the ability to focus in very low, flat lighting. For me, the Nikon D5 and D850 are those cameras. The Z7 is a contender to be sure, but still a little behind when focusing in that soft, low contrast lighting as are other mirrorless lines, but that’s an article for another time.

I should say for context, I’m not a pixel peeper. I don’t care about looking at my images at 400% or shooting resolution charts. I shoot a lot—Nearly a million frames a year and make a living from selling prints off those images. If my clients are happy and my gear stays out of my way, I can capture images as they unfold in front of me and I’m a happy creative. Now I know that sounds a little hypocritical since I have the best in Nikon’s line and it’s fair to add that until recently, I owned a lot of Sony’s mirrorless gear as well. To be clear, I want the best of the best, I love gear, but I realize that pretty much any camera can do the job. It’s the old saying that “Its the Photographer, not the Camera”.

So why am I heading down this rabbit hole you might ask?

Well, I hear all around me talk of gear and only gear. It’s amazing how fixated most photographers are about gear. There are entire blogs on nothing but gear, and those blogs usually get the most hits. For the most part, gear doesn’t make you a better photographer or get you hired. So this post is kinda that anti-gear review LOL

If I can do a shoot with a 4mp, 15yr-old camera with a dirty old crappy lens, and make a beautiful, sellable image, I’m hoping we can put gear talk aside for a while.

The next time we sit down with our photography tribe and the gear chatter begins, change the subject to posing, client relations, marketing —or I know, how about art! Talk about how to see light and capture its amazingness on a landscape or a model in the studio.

The shoot

The images shown in this post are from a very recent engagement session with my wonderful couple, Josh and Janel (much thanks for allowing me to share your images!) with which I shot the Z7, D2h, and D850.

Now I know what your thinking—No, I didn’t shoot the entire session with the D2h. These are real clients and I don’t want to take a chance of anything going wrong. The D2h is ancient in tech terms and has a tendency to randomly give me the dreaded “err” message. I can also hear a few of you wanting to see a side-by-side. Nope. This is really about what the D2h was able to give me. It’s pretty much the worst camera I could choose to shoot with, but nonetheless, it produced a beautiful set of images that are more than sellable at my usual 24” to 30” sizes.

So what’s the takeaway?

It’s up to you. For me, it’s all within the context of how good my current gear is and how little it matters whether it’s 50mp and 12fps or 24mp at 3fps, mirrorless or DSLR or what brand. Ultimately, gear just fills a need, so what’s yours?