A few days ago while raking leaves I was reminded about the importance of making things easy. This simple reality can directly impact our approach to photography and how we buy camera gear.

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Raking leaves is a mundane task that many of us do every year. What made this fall different was how much easier it was for me. During my first round of leaf raking this season, I filled 10 large leaf bags. All of which had their contents firmly packed down.

I was surprised with how much faster and easier I was able to accomplish this task because of a couple of new rakes we bought. These new rakes, especially the red and silver one, made the task of raking leaves much more time efficient, and far less physically demanding.

You can see the size of the rakes compared to my size 11 Merrell hiking boat. This is the smallest leaf rake that I’ve ever used. This begs the question how could it possibly be more time efficient and less physically demanding? The simple answer is its design.

The individual tines are thinner and much closer together when compared to other rakes I’ve used. This traps leaves much more effectively. Plus, the tines have a tall and significant inward curl. This allows a higher volume of leaves to collect under the head of the rake. These two design features changed the physical motion I needed to use to rake the lawn.

Rather than execute a typical series of hard, short, quick strokes over roughly the same area over and over again to gather leaves, I could simply put the rake on the surface of the grass and pull it towards me with one smooth stroke. It would collect the leaves and funnel them underneath the curved tines. For parts of the lawn where the leaf coverage wasn’t as thick, I could accomplish this task with basically one hand. I was impressed!

For me, making things easy has become the most critical consideration when buying camera equipment. Obviously we all face different challenges with the work we do. The camera gear that makes one photographer’s work easier to do… may not be the right gear for another photographer. But the fundamental need is the same.

We can end up chasing our tails by spending an inordinate amount of time comparing gear specifications. Worrying about sensor size. And spending hours reading/watching reviews.

We can get overloaded with a myriad of details and numbers… and miss the most important factor when buying camera gear by not asking ourselves a very simple question. Is this gear going to make doing my work easier? 

If it doesn’t… there’s a good chance we’ll move on to something else in the not too distant future… with our wallets lighter in the process.

Like other folks I’ve made some mistakes when buying camera gear. A big one comes to mind. That mistake was ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ when it came to full frame gear. I believed all of the hype and invested a fair amount of money (low five figures) in a reasonably extensive full frame kit.

No doubt the camera’s full frame sensor delivered great dynamic range and colour depth… as well as handling photographic noise quite well. The prime lenses and constant aperture f/4 zooms I owned were capable of good, sharp images. I could point my gear at just about anything and be assured of a solid, useable image.

But… that gear did not make doing my client video work easier. It added complexity and time to every project. Not only did I have to bring various tripods/fluid heads and typical camera supports like a slider, a jib, a skater dolly, and a stabilizer… I had to bring studio lights with me. Usually 4 or 6, along with light stands and a couple of hundred feet of extension cords. Onsite set-up wasn’t pretty. Other than pretty time consuming.

By accident, I stumbled into the Nikon 1 system as a back-up for my primary full frame kit. The Nikon 1 V2 turned out to be a wonderful little piece of kit for my industrial safety video work. Paired up with Nikon 1 prime lenses like the 10 mm f/2.8, 18.5 mm f/1.8 and 32 mm f/1.2 the Nikon 1 kit made shooting in poorly lit industrial venues much easier.

I could see a clear route to increased video project efficiency. All I had to do was cross the sensor size fixation bridge… and ignore all of the negative reviews that the Nikon 1 system had garnered.

Rather than have to set up a bank of studio lights for each video scene… then move them around constantly throughout the day… I could leave all of those lights at home and just shoot in available light.

Using shorter focal length Nikon 1 lenses with a crop factor of 2.7X meant I could get the depth-of-field I needed at f/2.8… rather than having to stop my full frame lenses down to f/8. The quality of the resulting video clips was more than acceptable to my clients.

Of course the Nikon 1 V2 wasn’t designed for prolonged and intensive video work, so the camera body was quite prone to overheating. The on-site time savings were so significant it made sense for me to buy two additional V2 bodies, and simply swap them out when they overheated… and keep shooting.

I did make another mistake buying camera gear, but it wasn’t as disruptive as my full frame adventure. That was dabbling with a pro level body and a couple of f/2.8 pro zoom lenses with a different M4/3 manufacturer. Once again I had made the mistake of believing reviews that I had read.

Unfortunately, that gear made my work more difficult. The wide angle zoom was prone to flare… and the camera body’s auto-focus was simply unacceptable for photography… especially in lower light conditions. After 10 days I returned all of the equipment and paid a small restocking charge. I didn’t want to compound my frustration by holding onto that equipment… trying to make it work. A mistake is a mistake. It’s best to simply accept responsibility and move on.

My transition to the Olympus/OM system made my client work even easier than shooting with the Nikon 1 system. Not only did my studio lights stay at home… but so did all of my camera supports.

I could show up at a client video shoot with nothing more than a medium sized shoulder bag containing a couple of camera bodies and a few lenses… then shoot everything handheld because of the outstanding IBIS (in-body image stabilization) performance. Constant aperture f/2.8 PRO zooms were ideal for the lighting conditions I faced, and gave me far more on-site flexibility when compared to using primes.

My client video days are well behind me now… but my need for camera gear that makes my work easy to do remains. Using technologies like Pro Capture, Bird Detection Subject Tracking, LiveND, in-camera focus stacking, and Handheld Hi Res are liberating. The excellent weather sealing eliminates stress and extends my photographic potential. Making things easy has become an everyday occurrence that I cherish.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what each of us uses in terms of camera equipment. Camera sensor size. Make. Model. None of that matters at all… as long as what we use is making things easy.

Technical Note

Photographs were captured handheld using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. All images were created from RAW files and out-of-camera jpeg files using my standard process in post. This is the 1,493 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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