The Sony Alpha 6400
Does gear matters or just the skill?
The materials we are using in the art creation are tools that can help for a better outcome, if we have the skills to use them at their true potential, but not only. They are the tools we learn and forge our skills with and they help us grow as artists. The purpose of your photography is the main deciding factor when choosing the gear.
What camera should we grab first? What lenses? This question is not simple, because it depends what kind of photography we want to make, so to make the subject short I would say what should we not do.
Don’t start with expensive bodies, it can be overwhelming and confusing. You can create good art with mid-range cameras and you can learn a lot before pushing to the limit and know in which direction you are going.
Good photos don’t come to you. You have to run for them.
Don’t start with zoom lenses. Every focal length has an entire story and it’s better to visualize your scene and the style before chosing it.
Zooming in and out will create a bad behavior and you will act like a tourist, who is static and frame everything with the hope you will catch something eventually.
Starting with primes is the best idea, because you can feel the world through a specific eye that will tell a specific story and you will learn to adapt and frame dynamically and search for an unique way to express and transmit what you see. On top of that, primes have bigger aperture, which means better light performance, bigger bokeh if you want and they are also sharper.
The lenses I chose for my kit were the Sigma 16mm f/1.4, which I rarely used and the Sigma 56mm f/1.4. I shot about half an year events, concerts, parties and occasionally street photography with only this lens which is what I would call “the best for the buck”. It’s the equivalent of 85mm in terms of full frame and it’s a portrait lens in general.
This camera is really performant, but to push it to the limit, I had to shoot in Log-2 and expose always at the highest limit in order to use its dynamic range entirely and have minimum granulation on high ISO, because most photos I’ve done during this time were in low light.
