[Gary Bagshawe]

Part 3

Ok, so if you have read this far then I can only assume that you are as mad as the rest the professional photography world. One of the things that constantly amazes me is peoples lack of confidence in their own ability, there are people on these forums who take much better photographs than I do that do not make money from there images. That said there is a big difference between taking a good photograph and taking a saleable photograph.

In this section I will try to explain what equipment you may need, this is not an exhaustive list but may give you some idea. I will be looking at this from my own point of view so please do not give me a hard time over the fact that I only use digital these days.

First of all you are going to need a camera body, most prosumer dslr cameras at around the £500.00 mark are going to be more than capable of producing images of a saleable quality, depending on the majority of work you will be doing depends on if you need a weather proof body or not, but remember if you do go down this expensive route your lenses will be more expensive as well.

I would also advise getting a second hand body as well as a backup in case your main body goes down mid shoot. I use my old D60 as a backup and these can be bought in good condition on ebay for around £150.00-£200.00.

As a minimum I would also buy a wide-angle zoom (15-30) a mid range zoom (28-90) and a telephoto zoom (100-400). In the first instance these do not need to be top of the range L series million pound pieces of glass, as many of you know I have only just bought my 1st L series lens and ive been making money from photography for over 20 years.
Next you will need a flashgun, many of the top end flashguns on the market now really do take the problems out of flash photography and in my book are well worth that little extra investment.

Memory cards, you can now buy these with a huge capacity but I prefer not to have all my eggs in 1 basket and as such have 3 separate smaller cards and a portable hard drive.
Your probably also going to need a case/bag of some sort to cart all the above around with you.

A computer of some sorts capable of running Photoshop and with as much ram as you can afford, with a cd/dvd burner and a large hard drive.
You will also need a printer, now depending on whether or not you will be printing your own photo’s depends on which printer to go for, I print most of my own stuff and use the canon pro 9000 A3. But I did manage for a long time without a photo printer but you will need one to print out invoices etc.
Ok so the list above should get you going and as you make more money you re-invest it in new kit or replacing old broken kit in my case.

Bye for now G.

[sawdust]

yes bump