Do You Need The Latest Kit Or Will Secondhand Gear Do?

Car headlight shot with a Nikon camera at f/8 and 55mm.

Searching For Excellence

A lot of my photographic life, I’ve been working away at simple quality issues. How can I make my pictures sharper, better exposed, less grainy? Very often, the answer has been a new camera, lens or light meter and up to a point, all the money I’ve spent has been worth it. My current camera and lenses are better than I used to use and I can prove it because I still have most of the cameras I've owned. For example, I can take pictures of the same subject with my 1976 Contax RTS and my Sony Alpha A7R III and compare them, if I want to.

But which picture will be better? Certainly, the Sony images will be sharper but variations in light, the subject's expression or position may make the 40-year-old film camera's shot better.  Either picture will be good enough to put on ePHOTOzine or to enter into a competition but winning a competition? Now, that's where the weak link is the component just behind the viewfinder (and not necessarily the kit you use).

This makes me wonder just how good your kit needs to be if you are on a tight budget?  Do you need the latest kit, or will secondhand gear do?

Street picture, Sony Alpha 700 and Tamron 28-200mm. 1/80 @ f/8, 200 ISO.

Options

I am assuming that you want to take your picture-making seriously? That means, in my book, that you need a camera where you can take charge of the settings and that includes being able to change lenses. The larger-format sensor of a DSLR will also allow you to get the differential focus that isn’t possible with a compact or a smartphone.

Canon at f/1.8 giving differential focus that a mobile ‘phone or a compact could not deliver without adjusting in processing.

Given this limitation, the cheapest option will be a well-used consumer camera and kit zoom lens but there will be a temptation to buy a really old professional camera because it’s nearly as cheap. Plus, there will also be some slightly unusual possibilities, as well as quite recent equipment that has been traded in for the very latest thing.

The aim of this article is to help you work through the logic of which of these options will work best for you. For instance, if you are very specifically interested in sport or wildlife, you may need the fast autofocus and high frame rate of a professional or semi-professional body. This may make the risk of very expensive repairs worthwhile, though I haven’t explored this avenue.

Traditional Black Country kitchen sink. Sony Alpha 700 and 35-70mm.

Reviews rarely compare products across generations. So it’s important not to let your decisions be swayed by legends. The 'legendary' high ISO performance of a professional camera in 2010 will be easily eclipsed by a modern bottom-end consumer body.

For this article, I borrowed three different cameras and tried them out on a variety of pictures of the sort I normally take.

Age and Actuations

There are a number of considerations when you’re buying older equipment:

1. If it goes wrong are spare parts available and is anyone prepared to work on the camera?

2. Do you know how much the equipment has been used?  If there are obvious signs of hard wear, you’re probably best moving on. Some reputable dealers will check and guarantee the number of actuations and you can compare this with the design life - typically 100,000 for a consumer camera and 500,000 for a professional body. Once you have bought a camera – or if you are able to take test frames with it, you can upload a frame at camera shutter count or a similar website to get a reading of how many times the shutter has been used. Note, though, that the count is sometimes reset by a service department in the course of repairs and such sites won’t necessarily cover all cameras, especially more recent ones.

3. In terms of sheer quality, how much have things moved on?

4. Comfort and convenience – one of the requirements for professional equipment is that it is very durable: that ability to bounce from solid concrete comes at a price in terms of weight and size.

Nina's Canon. Did the gaffer tape kill it? An even older replacement is next to it. I got it for free, but it needed a new battery and it’s not yet functioning…

Practical Test

My approach was unscientific: I borrowed a few older cameras from friends and contacts. I didn’t aim to do a comparison and each of them had a different sort of lens on the front.

I am not going to try to be scientific about it: my aim is to see if each of the camera and lens combinations I’ve tried is good enough for producing high-quality results. This doesn’t mean that I expect the results to match what I get from my expensive mirrorless full-frame Sony Alpha 7r but, if I had an equipment budget of £200, I now know I’d be able to take pictures that give me satisfaction and which I could present to others without embarrassment.

One further consideration should be if you like to manipulate images as some shots need more work than others.

Sony Alpha A700

The Sony Alpha A700 is a 12MP camera from 2007 and it cost around £140 from eBay.

The example I’ve used is actually one that I owned and has spent several years in the hands of a niece. I borrowed it back to see how it stands up these days and the 28-200mm Tamron on the front is also an eBay buy and it cost me £20 – so it’s not a costly outfit.

The build is solid, with front and rear control dials making manual operation easier. Of course, I liked the camera enough to buy it new, so I may be biased.

The 28-200mm gives a long tele effect, but the minimum focus distance is around six feet, which I found very tricky, so I swapped it for a 35-70mm Minolta lens that I have knocking around.

As close up as you can get with the 28-200mm lens on the Sony - 200mm, and six feet. It doesn’t focus closer at wider settings, either.

This is smaller, better quality and far more wieldy, and shows off the slickness and usability of a camera that was lower-end professional in intention, facilities and build.

1/25 second at 45mm – decent image stabilisation on the Sony Alpha 700.

A day out at the Black Country Museum showed me that it's a combination I could live with pretty easily. When I wanted to photograph a workshop that needed a wide lens, I shot six frames and left it to Photoshop to merge them. It wouldn’t work for a moving subject, and older software will make heavier weather of the joining, but you don’t necessarily need the wide-angle option.

The shot of a volunteer with a toy printed decently at A3, despite being taken at the maximum aperture of f/4.

Even with PS shake reduction, close-ups are frustrating and unsatisfactory with the 28-200mm lens on the Sony.

Verdict: Good enough for most purposes, including competition and saleable prints and satisfying to handle. The metering system can be slightly wayward at times.

Canon EOS 450D

I borrowed a Canon EOS 450D from a model, Nee Naa: given to her by a photographer and she’d raided eBay for a Yongnuo 50mm lens – a lookalike for the Canon 50mm f/1.8. You can buy one now on eBay for £80 and the lens for £40.

12MP gives plenty of detail for web use – or for reasonable-size prints. Canon EOS 450D at f/5.6.

It’s lightweight, definitely a consumer camera (much more recent than the Sony) and therefore easier to service and with better AF performance, though giving the same 12MP files. The example I borrowed from my model friend Nee Naa has a vertical grip, with a broken battery cover latch. I sorted this out for the duration of my use with some silver gaffer tape. Maybe less stylish than a Fujifilm X-series body – but I doubt anyone is going to be wanting to steal it looking like that!

Decent full-aperture performance from the Yongnuo lens on the Canon.

More importantly, it stopped working completely after relatively-few exposures. Nina described it as ‘totally on its way out’. She was not wrong, sadly. Lesson: if it’s free and works, take it but don’t part with your valuable cash for a dodgy-looking camera, because it probably is on its last legs.

Good performance from the Yongnuo on the Canon at f/5.6, and good dynamic range from the body.

Nikon D3000

The Nikon D3000 came with a kit zoom lens and a wide-angle adaptor is borrowed from a friend here on ePHOTOzine. I thought it had disgraced itself with a malfunction of the autofocus and this meant I found out about a ‘rangefinder’ facility, and a viewfinder display can be used to confirm correct focus: given the short throw of the focus ring, it’s a bit fiddly, but it works. I then found that the ‘problem’ was that the camera was set up for back body focus. Problem solved.

Dynamic range didn’t cope well with fluffy white clouds and a dark building in the JPG, but a conversion from RAW allowed me to pull the detail back.

Lesson: You may have to work harder than with the latest kit, but doing so will teach you a lot about how to expose and process.

Nikon shot of clouds – in the JPG file, they’re burned out, though the stonework wasn’t overexposed. 

Making The Best Of It

It really pays to cut your suit according to your cloth. Enormous prints of a fabulously detailed landscape are going to be hard work with a modestly-priced camera – but jewelled miniatures are perfectly feasible, as are impressionistic shots and (or course) ordinary family pictures. Remember, all the shots in this article are 1,000 pixels on the long side, which is quite enough for the web, and OK for an enprint.

Nee Naa photographed with her own Canon in low light – f/1.8 and 800 ISO.

Where Do You Get Your Cameras?

So, here’s the definitive advice: Don’t spend cash on a very old pro body but if someone gives you one, that’s fine. Use it, enjoy it, and don’t sweat it if it breaks down. If it’s free, and you can make it work, it’s a good camera. Don’t be afraid to use superglue and gaffer tape to hold it together, and enjoy having saved some money!

With your own money, but something mainstream and relatively recent – maybe five or eight years old. You want pictures, not to start a collection of classics that don’t work. Make sure it’s not been used hard or abused and be prepared to get it serviced if it needs it a few months into ownership. Take note of what the service company tells you – if it’s a clunker, move on and get something better.

If you like to process for an impressionistic look, the inherent quality of the shot matters far less. Nik Efex and Nee Naa, shot with her Canon EOS 450D.

Decide what you want to shoot, and gear the kit for doing that. Forget high ISO performance if you shoot landscapes or studio portraits, the frame rate doesn’t matter if you aren’t shooting wildlife or action and the range of lenses available isn’t important if there’s a lens that does what you need.

Beware of superzooms, especially if the super part is all long-end telephoto. While the quality compromise may not matter, the usability can be an issue. My problem was that a lens that won’t focus closer than six feet isn’t much use to me. However, modern software allows you to take a series of shots and paste them together very easily, as this composite from four frames shot with theSony  Alpha 700 shows.

4-frame composite shot – but this approach to getting a wider angle requires a static subject.

A related question is whether to grab cheap, film-era lenses: I’d say that you should exercise caution and remember that most economy bodies are not going to be full-frame and so a ‘standard’ zoom will actually cover a range that is standard to short telephoto. I actually find that OK as a day-to-day lens, but if you want to shoot wide-angle shots, you will need to lens up accordingly.

Black and white mode from the Alpha – a film-era 35-70mm kit zoom worked well for me.

On the other hand, there’s a reason that any AF 50mm lens sells around the £80 mark or higher – they are excellent portrait and general purpose lenses on an AP-S format camera and will usually outperform a kit zoom by a good margin. But, again, if it’s free and it works, play with it – you may get some interesting results.

Good directional lighting always increases apparent sharpness. Sony Alpha 700, 35-70mm lens.

Be aware of manual focus lenses. They are tricky to use on a DSLR, which lacks the aids for really accurate focus that manual focus cameras have. It’s a mistake to think that buying an adaptor will give you access to millions of wonderful lenses dirt cheap.

Car taillight shot with the Canon and 50mm lens at f/4.