The internet is full of must have myths, and this is particularly true when it comes to photography gear and related equipment. I can’t speak for other folks, but some of the worst photographic purchases I’ve made were based on must have recommendations that I got from other people. Of course the ultimate blame for those purchase errors lies with me… for having followed ill-advised suggestions.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge. Photographs have been added to serve as visual breaks. All images were captured handheld by my wife during our most recent trip to New Zealand in the late fall of 2024.

Many of us are asked by other photographers what they should buy in terms of cameras and/or lenses. When asked, we often give them our opinions and recommendations.

Although our intentions may be positive, we may be inadvertently pointing others towards making a potentially costly mistake.

Our opinions and recommendations are shaped by our own experiences and preferences. None of which may be relevant to the person who is asking for the purchase recommendation.

One of the biggest must have myths that has been around the photography business for well over a decade is that we must have full frame camera equipment.

Some camera revue sites spew this kind of nonsense frequently. It is certainly true that depending on our actual photographic/video needs, buying full frame gear could be an optimal choice.

For many of us… this suggestion might as well have fallen out of the back end of a bovine. On the advice of others, I fell into the full frame trap many years ago. Fortunately I learned my lesson early and sold all of that gear without incurring a large financial loss.

For my specific needs using full frame gear turned out to be costly and very inefficient. This was especially true when doing safety video work for my clients. It necessitated dragging around a half dozen studio lights in industrial locations, and spending far too much time setting up individual video clips.

Then I’d have to move all of my lights and rerun my power cords for the next video clip or two. In business, time is money… for both a supplier and their client. I stumbled on a wonderful solution. One that I can guarantee you was not recommended by anyone that I knew. I started doing all of my client video work with the Nikon 1 system.

Due to the 2.7X crop factor, I discovered that I could get the depth-of-field I needed by shooting at f/2.8… rather than at f/8 with my full frame equipment. I could keep my maximum ISO value to ISO-800 as I had with my full frame gear… but I no longer had to bring any studio lights with me. This was a huge time saver.

My clients still loved the projects I did for them in terms of quality. Plus, I could save them some money as my on-site shooting time was reduced by at least 30%.

Am I suggesting that everyone should shoot with smaller sensor cameras? Absolutely not! Using full frame and larger format gear may be the best choice for a lot of photographers.

What I am suggesting is that we should all be aware of the must have myths that are so rampant in the photography world. To avoid expensive mistakes we need to do our best not to fall prey to these ‘must haves’ regardless of what they may be.

The best way of doing that is not to blindly follow the crowd. Or, to take someone else’s suggestion as gospel. We need to take everything with a grain of salt. The only must have is that each of us do the work required to really understand our needs. Then develop a well thought out list of our photographic priorities, against which we can assess various camera equipment options.

If we fail to properly access our photographic priorities and needs, our purchase decision can become clouded by a jumbled mess of competing specifications, claims and opinions. Many of which may be completely irrelevant to our actual needs.

Photography can be a wonderfully vibrant and creative endeavor. There are so many excellent choices in the market place today that each of us can find the ideal camera equipment for our needs. All we need do is ignore must have myths and focus on our photographic priorities and our actual needs.

Technical Note

Photographs were captured handheld using camera equipment  noted in the EXIF data. All images were created from RAW files using my standard process in post. This is the 1,440 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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