I know what some people are thinking – nice pictures and all, I’d like to learn how to do something similar, but I don’t have the money for equipment that costs this much; is there a cheaper option, and by cheaper I mean almost free?
In fact, yes. There is. However, what you need to do is completely ignore everything a professional photographer would get, and buy something on the complete sidelines, because where there’s interest there’s demand, and where there’s demand, the prices are high. So, let’s say you have a really tight budget, 200 EUR or so. Let’s say your target image quality is a 4K wallpaper or an A3/B3 print. Let’s say you want a starter kit and you don’t care about infinite upgradability in the future, because you can always sell this for as much as you paid for it, and get something more expensive if you run into money.
In this case, I recommend the Olympus Four Thirds kit, a camera with two lenses:
In this specific case, it’s the 8MP E-300 body with 40-150mm and 14-45mm lenses, which are excellent. What can you do with that? How about this:
Or this sample I took with the same lens (ZD 14-45mm) when I had it for review:
The camera I used was E-500, but E-300 has the same sensor, so the colours and clarity would be identical. So, that’s what you get for 200 EUR, plus the budget for fresh batteries and a tripod. What are the limitations? You don’t get the super shallow depth of field unless you focus very close at the maximum aperture and focal length, and even then you can’t blur everything out. However, blurring everything out isn’t necessarily all of photography, and learning the composition is more important. If you want to blur everything out with Four Thirds, you will need the ZD 50mm f/2 macro, and that one is actually cheap for what it is:
What it is, is one of my personal all-time favourite lenses; it renders images as beautifully as the FE 90mm f/2.8 G macro for Sony. It’s an absolutely stellar lens, and you can get it used for 140 EUR. What can it do? Everything my ZD 14-54mm could do at maximal magnification, but more and better, crisper and brighter:
If you want wider angle, there’s the ZD 9-18mm f/4-5.6 but it’s not quite inexpensive; around 270 EUR:
That’s 18-36mm equivalent, so not extreme, but very good. ZD 7-14mm f/4 is the best, but that one is 600 EUR, so probably not something you would consider as a budget option. However, 200 for the body and two lens kit, 140 EUR for the macro/portrait lens and 270 EUR for the ultrawide equals 610 EUR for the four lens kit, in excellent optical quality, where the main limitation is the camera body, and you can later get an adapter for the micro four thirds, get an OM-D body with 20MP and there you go; but of course that is additional money; the MMF-1 adapter is 144 EUR, Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV with 20.3MP is 500 EUR. The entire set in the ultimate upgrade path will set you back 1254 EUR. That’s four lenses, two bodies and the adapter, and with those 20.3MP files you can print B2/B1 sizes, which means up to meter wide. Sure, 1254 EUR is a lot, but you can start with 200 and upgrade over time; I’m just saying you’re not boxed in.
So yes, it can be done on a budget. You can get two very nice lenses and an obsolete body that still creates beautiful colours, and as you learn, you can see what you want, and what you don’t. Most important of all, if your images suck, you can blame the equipment. 🙂