Hey Ya'll! Hope you're having a great day! It's the holiday season and folks will be buying photography gear for Christmas. I've already had a couple of people ask me for recommendations for loved ones. This week I want to talk about the most expensive item in Photography. It doesn't matter what brand you used whether it be Sony, Canon, or Nikon or any other brand. And it's not an item per se but an element in the exposure triangle. Its Aperture !  Let me explain a little. Aperture is the opening in your lens. The f/stop that people are always talking about. The largest size aperture will determine the total cost of a lens to a certain point. It can make the price of lenses double. If you've bought many lenses you know that they are expensive enough. I have written about Lenses in the past like which is better prime or zooms and other topics. But I was watching a YouTube video and it was the basics of photography and this guy said that Aperture was the most expensive part in photography. And I started thinking about it and it is. I have never thought about it before but it really is. For almost any type of photography the Aperture  (especially in zoom lenses)  is the most important part of the equation . I've always said invest in good glass not camera bodies. Good glass is expensive but it will last much longer than the body will. New technology will make the fancy new stuff on your shiny camera body not so new after a couple of years but a good lens can last decades. Good Zoom lenses aren't cheep but one with a low aperture can almost cost as much as that fancy new  camera body does. For example in Amazon a Sony 20-70 f/4 G lens cost 998 dollars today. A 24-70 f/2.8 GM cost 2299 dollars today. By comparison a Sony A7IV which most Sony professional portrait and wedding photographers use at 33 megapixels cost  2098 dollars. Now it's not the biggest and baddest Sony body but you can see that a a low aperture zoom lens cost money. And most folks want a zoom lens.

So what does all of this mean? Well what it really means is to decide what kind of photography do you shoot? Do you really need that low aperture lens? If you are a professional  portrait photographer and need the separation or bokeh or a wedding photographer maybe you need that fast lens. And if you're a professional go ahead and buy it you can claim it on your taxes as a business expense. But most of us are not professional and don't have the easy access to cash. Take me for example I am a hobbyist and take photo's for fun I'm retired and on a fixed income so money is tight. Do I really need the wide open apertures when I shoot most of my stuff? My main lens is the one mentioned above the Sony 20-70 f/4 lens and I bought it used from MPB used to save even more money. I don't shoot portraits where I need things to really blur out in the background. If I do I don't use a zoom lens like mentioned before. I use a prime lens which is less expensive and I can get wider apertures like f/1.8. Let me share  a shoot I just did. It was the Christmas parade. In our town it starts at 4pm which means about mid-way through it will get darker and on the f/4 lens my ISO's will rise dramatically . So when it started to get dark I put on a 50mm f/2.5 lens and got great results. So if you want to shoot with wide apertures Primes are the way to go. You can get them at f/1.8 reasonably cheap and that is plenty of aperture for blurry backgrounds. They do make f/1.4 and smaller but you get back to the expensive range again. So if your a landscape or really any type of photographer that's not a portrait or wedding photographer I would go with lenses with say a constant f/4 for the maximum aperture . It's a middle of the road aperture lens. Not the cheapest kit lens with variable apertures. Most modern lenses use software to correct lens flaws that more expensive lenses correct optically making them more expensive. The middle of the road works great for me and how I shoot and I don't want for the biggest and baddest new lens that just came out. If I need separation or the blurred out bokeh I grab one of my primes. In the big picture it's a lot cheaper and I get as good or better results. 

Well that's enough for today until next week grab the gear you own and Get out and Shoot! 

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 post there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link