blogging photography : my cameras

I can’t believe I’ve never done a post like this before, It’s about time I rounded up the cameras that I use on this blog. It’s one of my most commonly asked questions so why I’ve never done a dedicated post I don’t know!

Canon 700d: Up until a few months ago I’ve ALWAYS used second hand SLR’s. I’ve had a Canon 1000d and a Canon 500d but never purchased one brand new from a store. I decided it was about time to upgrade my photography and get a new camera. I’m familiar with the Canon brand as it's what I've always used, I obviously had to go with them. It’s a nice bit of kit and takes wonderful images in low light. I love how many different settings that it has and how I can play with so many different settings with ease. It has silent auto focus therefore it’s also suitable to film on unlike the 600 series from Canon (a blogger favourite). I use a mixture of the kit lens (18-35mm) and a 40mm (mainly in beauty shots and out and about ones), But I think you can get away with just the kit lens if you're a beginner. Admittedly my friend Jon takes most of my outfit photos these days and he uses a Canon as far as I'm aware.

Sony NEX-5R: This is what I used to use to film all of my videos on my Youtube Channel. It’s a good little camera, yet I might sell it now I’ve got my 700d which films in absolutely beautiful crystal clear HD. I love the camera as it has a flippy screen so I can see what Im doing, although I do get a lot of comments saying I stare at myself all the time! Its just really hard as you want to be in focus all the time, and get the most flattering of angles! Duh. I do like filming on this but I feel it can often look a bit “soft”. By this I feel like my face is a bit too blurred out and not as sharp as I’d like. None the less I do film most of this one, but like I said a little bit softer than I'd like. In all I think it's a excellent SLR/compact hybrid camera which I’d really recommend as a good all rounder.

Canon S100: This is what I sometimes use when I do lifestyle type posts (although at the moment I've been using my SLR) as it’s such a small compact camera. It fits into my bag perfectly and is so durable! I think it takes amazing quality photos and has tons of different settings for all sorts of different environments. It also has one of the best range of manual settings I’ve seen on such a little digital camera. Also this is the camera I vlog (including this unexpected vlog), although sometimes I use the Sony one depending on how I feel!

I want to make it clear that I really don’t believe you need a SLR to take good blog photographs. You just need a mixture of good lighting a little bit of editing in post production. Often when my camera is out of battery, I use my Canon S1000 to take my beauty blog photos as they are just as good. Not the same but nothing a little post production couldn’t help with. I think far too many people think that Canon's are the only cameras you should use if you want to blog, but I really don't agree. I feel its such a waste of money. So many people buy SLR’s thinking they’ll automatically be the best blog ever but most little digital cameras have the same settings. Things have come a long way since the old days of crappy point and shoot cameras. I think of it like this, if you aren’t going to take the time to learn how to use the manual settings to get the most out of your camera there is really no point wasting hundreds of pounds on it. I see far too many people not getting the most out of SLR’s and just using the manual settings when just knowing what F-stop or a ISO is could help you get such a better shot. I know I did photography at college, but I think its worth learning a bit about both photography techniques and photo editing if you want to get better blog photos. There are countless books, online guides or even 1 day courses you could take to get some photographic skills which can help you out.

In conclusion I really do think the key to good blog photos is lighting and a bit of editing. Being savvy with composition, lighting and thinking about a few things also helps, but I’ll save that for another post. I hope you enjoyed this little non-usual LLYMLRS post, but I do hope it'll be helpful to those who want some frank advice about cameras and blogging. Let me know if you want to see any other posts like this and I'll see what I can whip up.

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Photos By Jon Barker (edited by me) & follow him on Twitter @jedijon