Introduction

Wether you are an amateur or professional photographer, you’ll want, at a time, to buy a new camera. This desire will come sooner or later depending of your personality, but this moment will happen…

Questions you have to ask to yourself

To know if you have to buy a new camera, you should ask to yourself several questions. Firstly:

Do I want to buy a new camera because because I need it or because I cannot resist to buy this wonderful new … (fill the blank with the camera of your choice)?

• Answer 1: “A cannot resist” – If you can afford to buy it (and your family will not suffer the consequences), buy it! You will one day sooner or later! So, enjoy using the new camera as soon as possible!
• Answer 2: “I need it because…” – In this case, you will have to ask yourself another question. Because you will always find good reasons to buy your new toy. If you are a professional photographer, you should always have this second answer, and it is even more important to ask to yourself this another question.

Let’s take a real world example: myself Today I’m working with two DSLR. One of these is a Nikon D2X.

Nikon D2X

I own it for several years and it is always a perfect tool for my work, but there is always this new DSLR that I’d like to buy… So, I must ask to myself the good question and be honest when I answer to it:

What are the new features of this new DSLR that will help me in my daily basis work or get new customer contracts?

• “the LCD screen is better” – Sure I like a lot the D700′s LCD screen. I have a better feedback regarding image quality and details. It is far better than the D2X’s LCD screen. But does this LCD screen prevent me to take good photos? No, so it is a bad argument.
• “there is less noise above ISO 400″ – It’s true. But I mainly use the D2X for sport event photography during daylight. If I need to take photos with an higher ISO, I’m using my D700. So, this is another bad argument.
• “I can record videos” – This is the new hype in the photography business. But does my customers ask me if I could provide a movie alongside my pictures during sport events or during corporate events? Not yet. I’ll have to think about this argument in some time when my customers will ask me to shoot movies (and they will in some time). But right now, there is no business advantage to invest in a new DSLR for this new feature. So, this is an argument I’ll have to look at again in a few months (or weeks).
• “better resolution (more pixels)” – Maybe, but it will not be an advantage for me. I will have more work to process my photos. I will need more powerful computers, more storages and more backups. Furthermore, my print quality is excellent for my needs and my customer’s needs. So, this is another bad argument.

Looking at these four arguments, none passes the test question. So, my decision is easy to take: I keep my D2X. But I’ll have to ask myself the same questions in a moment when my customers will ask me to shoot videos.

Conclusion

Wether you are an amateur or professional photographer, ask always to yourself good questions before buying a new camera. Unless this is just a “impulse” that you can afford, it will let you focus on your photos and not think that with a new camera you will magically… (fill the blank with your favorite excuse, “make better photos”, “have more customers”,…)

Introduction

We are using some lenses less than others: for example tilt and shift lenses.

These lenses are mainly used for architecture and landscape photography. And they are often also expensive.

24mm f/3.5D ED PC-E NIKKOR

Issues

Let’s look at the 24mm f/3.5 PC-E NIKKOR. It is a really good tilt & shift lens but…

• it is not a zoom lens
• it is a manual lens (no autofocus)
• the public price is about 2200$

2200$ for a manual lens? It is a high price for a lens nowadays. If you are not a photographer specialized in architecture photography, it is a big expense to have some fun and try new things.

Furthermore, if you only have only few orders for architecture works, it will be hard to have a return on investment.

The answer

As a Nikon professional, you have certainly subscribed to NPS… You have to know that you can rent lenses at an official NPS shop if you are a NPS subscriber.

If you have an order from time to time for an architecture work, you should rent this tilt & shift lens. You can rent the 24mm f/3.5 PC-E NIKKOR for around 100$ a day. If you have a full day of architecture work, it would pay for the rent.

It is also a good solution to try a new lens during a full day before buying it. Furthermore, if your NPS shop is a good businessman, you will probably be able to negotiate a discount on the lens if you buy it after that.

When to buy the lens?

That will depend on the number of work that will use this lens.

Regarding our example, the lens is sold around 2200€ and you rent it for 100€ a day. So, it will be better to buy it if you have at least 22 days of work with this lens.

In all cases, I strongly advise you to rent the lens before buying it. You will be able to play with it and check if it really fits your needs.

Introduction

Recently, I have been to the Nikon Pro forum, the 22th of March in Paris. The goal for Nikon was to present the video function in their pro cameras. The invitation card was clear enough:

Nikon Pro Forum, March 22

As I was exploring the usage of video for my job, I wanted to have experiences of other photographers on their use of video and especially their business opportunities.

Forum presentation

Conferences were mainly organized by the web site photographie.com. Its editor, Didier de Faÿs was the moderator of conferences and unfortunately it was pretty bad in this role. He was often at a loss for words and he was not giving a good rhythm to the conferences. Moreover, he seemed to know personally some of the photographers and it introduces a lot of collusion: a moderator should be neutral, but he often spent his time to congratulate the guests.

Morning conferences: a deception

Morning conferences were bad. The first conference “Being a pro today” was an annoying discussion. The only person who was interested was a buyer of art that should participate… and who was not present! Otherwise, the discussion revolved around sales trends for consumer cameras (totally useless for a pro) and photos management workflow (I think that any professional has already tackled this issue today).

The next conference was really “parisienne” (living in a microcosm and only looking at himself). The photographer Elisabeth Schneider showed a video she made. You can watch it on this page (in French).

I have nothing to say about the video of Mme Schneider that has a good tempo and an interesting subject. But it was her first try with video and she was very arrogant and presumptuous. She says in the interview that this is a video she has done during her studies and her teachers have helped her enormously. However, she was always refocusing the discussion on herself and forget to be modest.

Afternoon conferences: far better

Luckily, the afternoon speakers were more interesting.

First in the conference “Try the video”, two people were part of the discussion.

Olivier Lambert, the owner of the web site brêves de trottoirs (brief sidewalks), presented his work. These are short videos about the neighborhoods of Paris. This work is unpretentious and pleasant to watch.

The interesting point was the business side of this site. The two creators of the site have received afund  from the CNC to help them make this site. But no diffuser (online newspaper, television) was willing to pay to broadcast their videos, although they were interested in them. Their reaction was always the same: why should they pay to broadcast them when they were freely available on the Internet? This highlights a major problem with this kind of video works: how to be payed for your work?

Then Thierry Rajic talked about his career: a former commercial photographer who had the opportunity to become a director, first for clips then for advertisements. The most interesting part of the talk was that he highlighted that a photographer and director are two separate jobs and that a good photographer will not necessarily be a good director (it was quite comical as the moderator tried to absolutely make him say the otherwise).

Finally, William Herbaut was presenting web documentaries. It is a new way to present stories that newspapers and TV channels start to experiment en their web sites. France 5 has some of them on its web site (in French).

Retour à Tchernobyl - Guillaume Herbaut

Guillaume Herbaut is working on a web documentary on Tchernobyl. He was talking about it in the conference “Why doing a web documentary?”. You can already read his blog (in French). The business approach for this work was interesting. It will sell it through different mediums:

• publications in magazines
• a web documentary sold to a news paper or a TV channel
• a book published the same time than the web documentary
• a photo exposition in a fine art gallery

Moreover, it has found additional funding:

• the fine art gallery has funded part of the story
• the CNC has funded another part.

It is interesting to see the various business opportunities available for this kind of personal work. We must remember to work hard on pre-production to validated all these opportunities.

Conclusion

Manufacturers highlight video in their cameras  but photographers  have not yet found a definitive business model for the exploitation of these videos.

Photographers who are journalist can also create web documentaries. But journalist are a minority among photographers.

As a photographer, you can also provide a new service for event photography (especially for business events). So you can take photos during the event and also provide a video (composed of still photos and videos) of the event. The main advantage for your customer is to reduce his cost. But your customer will think that as you are already working on the event, the additional cost for the video will be small (he is just forgetting the post-production work related to the video). So, if you want to sell this kind of service, you should not have an high expectation regarding the price of this service, otherwise your customer will directly hire a company specialized in videos.