Photographers are the people remaining out of sight but working hard to capture every single precious moment as it happens, to never miss a thing – whether this is at a wedding or a school or out in nature. Photography can be both a lucrative and rewarding career, or it can be a fantastic hobby that a person can devote many years of their life to. It’s also something of a spectrum, especially when it comes to the gear used and what limits there are due to costs. No one ever said photography is cheap, but it’s this extra investment that often separates the amateurs from the pros.
In fact, photographers that do want to become professionals will need to put down a fairly decent amount of capital if they want to set themselves apart from the crowd. Anyone thinking about wanting to take their photography to the next level and begin earning some money will need to invest in the following pieces of gear.
The Camera Body
A camera that’s going to be used for pro photography will need to have the correct parts attached to it. These parts are not always included in the purchase of a camera body and will generally be an extra cost that the photographer will need to cover. The camera body itself can be quite expensive, depending on the quality and feature set of the camera.
Most pro photographers will generally work with two cameras – which makes it much easier to switch lenses without actually having to manually remove and replace each lens when there’s time pressure. This is not something that everyone can do, and a lot prefer to only have one camera with a general-use lens.
The Lenses
Next up are the lenses, the type of lenses that a photographer wants will very much depend on what they intend to shoot. A nature photographer generally wants to have a high-zoom lens as well as a macro lens, allowing them to capture scenes from both as far as possible as well as extremely close up.
Many photographers also keep multiple backups for their lenses, although this can be prohibitively expensive and it’s not feasible for many professionals starting out. Regardless, having at least two lenses comes highly recommended, although the regular 70 to 200mm can serve in most situations.
Storage Needs
Another thing that a photographer will need to keep in mind is the kind of storage they’re going to need. A couple of microSD cards is not always going to work out, especially if they intend on also capturing video, which quickly eats up space, not leaving space for other things, like apps or online casino games when hot swapping with a phone. On top of the cards that are going to be plugged into the cameras, investing in a few, reliable hard drives are also worth the cost. Many photographers will even run small servers at home to maintain large backups. The RAW format used in photography can use up hundreds of gigabytes and even terabytes of storage before too long.
