Newbie needs advice!

STOP! Seriously Amanda, stop buying stuff unless you are really really sure of what you want/need.

Buy one thing at a time, use it for a while, then think about the next move. It will almost certainly save you a lot of heartache and money. There are always several ways of doing most things, some will suit you, some less so, and every item has a knock-on effect to the rest of your outfit. One step at a time.
 
HoppyUK said:
STOP! Seriously Amanda, stop buying stuff unless you are really really sure of what you want/need.

Buy one thing at a time, use it for a while, then think about the next move. It will almost certainly save you a lot of heartache and money. There are always several ways of doing most things, some will suit you, some less so, and every item has a knock-on effect to the rest of your outfit. One step at a time.
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But I DO need a Hasselblad!
(Just kidding)
 
I read an article on this site some time ago, this is not a link to the article, just the site...

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html

Anyway... The article was about what you'd recommend a mewbe to photography should buy and the answer was a full frame DSLR and 35, 50 and 85mm f1.4 lenses adding up to several £k. The article said that this may initially seem a lot to recommend to a newbe and then listed the upgrade gyrations that many of us go through with kit listing the various costs along the way and of course the conclusion at the end was that going for the FF camera and three lens set up was actually cheaper than starting with an entry level DSLR and kit lens and going through the usual upgrades.

I thought about that article for a while and the more I thought about it the more it made sense if we assume that many end up with the full frame camera and something like the traditional three lens set. Recommending that a newbe spends several £k straight off the bat then starts to make financial sense... if we assume that many of us end up with a higher end set up one day. Of course some of us then sell up and go back to a compact.
 
I have that bag too :) it's awesome, can fit loads of stuff in it.

Joking apart, what Hoppy says is right. You now have a reasonable set up, what you need to do now is learn it's strengths and weaknesses, how the focal length effects perspective etc. once you hit a point when you cannot achieve what you want because of your kit, then spend again.
I started out with an entry dslr and kit lens added a 70-300 for reach and bought a bag to carry it all round in. I would imagine this is typical of most newbies. You've done the same (just you replaced a £200 70-300 with a £1800 70-200 :) )

As to the FF logic, it's a fair point if you assume everyone will end up FF. However there is a lot of people who view FF as the holy grail that they need to get one day. Aps c sensors have proved so much that in reality now there isn't much difference between the 2. It's only when you start looking at high ISO that you really notice the difference. Having said that I love the colours my 5D produces :)
 
ChrisHeathcote said:
I have that bag too :) it's awesome, can fit loads of stuff in it.

Joking apart, what Hoppy says is right. You now have a reasonable set up, what you need to do now is learn it's strengths and weaknesses, how the focal length effects perspective etc. once you hit a point when you cannot achieve what you want because of your kit, then spend again.
I started out with an entry dslr and kit lens added a 70-300 for reach and bought a bag to carry it all round in. I would imagine this is typical of most newbies. You've done the same (just you replaced a £200 70-300 with a £1800 70-200 :) )

As to the FF logic, it's a fair point if you assume everyone will end up FF. However there is a lot of people who view FF as the holy grail that they need to get one day. Aps c sensors have proved so much that in reality now there isn't much difference between the 2. It's only when you start looking at high ISO that you really notice the difference. Having said that I love the colours my 5D produces :)
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Actually, just £1350 - I'm a careful shopper. And I've now seen pictures of your bag!!
 
woof woof said:
I read an article on this site some time ago, this is not a link to the article, just the site...

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html

Anyway... The article was about what you'd recommend a mewbe to photography should buy and the answer was a full frame DSLR and 35, 50 and 85mm f1.4 lenses adding up to several £k. The article said that this may initially seem a lot to recommend to a newbe and then listed the upgrade gyrations that many of us go through with kit listing the various costs along the way and of course the conclusion at the end was that going for the FF camera and three lens set up was actually cheaper than starting with an entry level DSLR and kit lens and going through the usual upgrades.

I thought about that article for a while and the more I thought about it the more it made sense if we assume that many end up with the full frame camera and something like the traditional three lens set. Recommending that a newbe spends several £k straight off the bat then starts to make financial sense... if we assume that many of us end up with a higher end set up one day. Of course some of us then sell up and go back to a compact.
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Disagree. Budget aside, the majority of photographers with a full compliment of kit would probably not have a FF DSLR, and they certainly wouldn't have three primes to go with it - they'd have zooms. And even if that was where you might end up, a newcomer would just get confused with too much kit all at once, and end up faffing about not knowing which lens was best for what. And almost certainly they'd soon be wanting more reach than 85mm, and more width than 35mm.

If there is such a thing as a classic outfit, it's a DSLR, a standard zoom, telezoom and wide zoom. But just taking the first additional lens that most people get, a telezoom. Canon alone makes ten in the 55-300mm range, from £100 to £2k. Only the user knows which one is best for them, and only after some experience.
 
HoppyUK said:
Disagree. Budget aside, the majority of photographers with a full compliment of kit would probably not have a FF DSLR, and they certainly wouldn't have three primes to go with it - they'd have zooms. And even if that was where you might end up, a newcomer would just get confused with too much kit all at once, and end up faffing about not knowing which lens was best for what. And almost certainly they'd soon be wanting more reach than 85mm, and more width than 35mm.

If there is such a thing as a classic outfit, it's a DSLR, a standard zoom, telezoom and wide zoom. But just taking the first additional lens that most people get, a telezoom. Canon alone makes ten in the 55-300mm range, from £100 to £2k. Only the user knows which one is best for them, and only after some experience.
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As I disagree with a large number of your posts it's no surprise to me that we disagree again now :D

I haven't linked the article and I wish I had the time to search the site for it. Anyway, I can't say that it was 100% serious and it was almost certainly just putting the idea out there for interest and discussion. I can see the point that jumping to the end of the upgrade path may well have merit but of course we don't know what we want and we have to try, play and learn along the way and what we want does change so in reality even if buying a D800 and three primes on day one of our photographic journey could make sense in reality few would do it.

On what's classic, I can't really see how the more recent zooms can be more classic than the earlier primes. Actually, step back in time a bit and many people didn't have a set of lenses at all, they had one lens and it wasn't a zoom it was a prime. I often go out with just the lens on my camera and I find it very enjoyable.

On the more modern and more recently introduced zoom side :D the three lens set could well be 17-40, 24/28-70 and 70-200 but of course everyone knows that this is misguided and that the prime set up is the classic set and is the way to go :D

After over forty years of photography and buying kit I seem to have settled on 24, 50 and 85mm manual lenses on a FF body as my quality set up but I've doubled up on the 50's as one is a f1.4 and the other is a macro. I also have an AF MFT set (x2 crop) that consists of 20 and 45mm primes (40 and 90mm equiv.) and a couple of zooms. The wide prime and zoom are missing from this set as IMVHO they're too expensive. I don't think that I would have jumped to this point though as I don't think I'd have liked to have missed a step along the way as it's been fun, it's one of my hobbies and it's meant to be fun.

What I do miss in my current set up is a very simple fixed lens fixed focus camera to replace my 35mm film cameras that worked like that. I have a one button fixed focus Medion compact but to be honest I get better quality images from my phone.
 
ChrisHeathcote said:
As to the FF logic, it's a fair point if you assume everyone will end up FF. However there is a lot of people who view FF as the holy grail that they need to get one day. Aps c sensors have proved so much that in reality now there isn't much difference between the 2. It's only when you start looking at high ISO that you really notice the difference. Having said that I love the colours my 5D produces :)
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For me the sweet spot for hand held shooting is probably a MFT/APS-C CSC. I have a FF CSC but I only bought it so that I could use my old manual lenses on a FF body. If my eyesight starts to go and manual focus becomes a problem I'll probably just have a MFT or APS-C CSC AF set up.
 
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