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

Hey Ya'll! We are in the last month of the year and I think it's a time to remember the last year and the photography highlights. Seeing what we have done and planning what we will do is an annual process for me. I think that planning is important part of having a successful year. I try to plan trips and projects as much as I can but looking back is a process that we should do also. This blog is about looking back at the great year that I have had. 

Projects: I had a few projects this past year. This blog is one of my photography projects. It's a way I can express myself and give my opinions about stuff Photography and otherwise related subjects. It's quite an  undertaking coming up with topics, trying to make it interesting and Photo's to go with the text. This is at least the third year of weekly blogs.  I feel obligated to put one out each and every week. My next project was the Small Town project. This is where I would pick a small town and spend a day taking photo's and documenting the town. I had about 25 small towns picked out in eastern North Carolina. I got to about 2/3rds of them but not quite all. So I didn't finish this project. But it really gave me a weekly thing to do. I would travel each week to a different town after doing a little research and photograph the town. Sometimes my wife would accompany me and we would make a day of it. But for some reason I didn't quite finish this project and will begin again next year to finish and when I Virginia Shed finish I will make a personal book on it. So that will go on the next years goals to finish. Maybe my biggest project was the film project. In this project I took vintage cameras shot film and processed it at home and bring into Lightroom and process like digital photos. I absolutely loved this project and it took me back to my roots of photography. It started out slowly but became a main part of my photography for the year. I bought inexpensive film cameras cleaned them up and ran some film through them. I even bought a Medium Format Camera. I got better at the processing and the photography and by the end of the year I was getting good results. I did make a book of the photo's. I made it like the old fashioned books with printed photo's Charleston West Virginia attached to the album with the little sticky corners to hold the photo's in place. This was a great success and I carry a film camera everywhere I have my digital. The last project is like every year making a book out of photo's that I think were winners. I have completed this book and it will be mostly an heirloom passed down through generations I hope.  To me it's a way to preserve my photography by printing a book. 

Trips: I was very lucky this year and was able to go on a few trips .  Me and my photography wingman Robert went on a few trips . First there was our annual New Years trip to Cape Hatteras that Mike joined us to bring in the new year. We also did a couple of other trips one to a local farm to shoot a cabin , one to a friends house to shoot some of his live stock. We went to Virginia a couple of times once to shoot the milky way and another to shoot race cars at the Virginia International Raceway . We did some back country roads trips also . Our longest trip wast to Indiana for a Bicycle road race that he was going to ride in. We made a road trip out of it and hit 8 states in 5 days. We make a great photography Duo and hope to take many more trips in the future. My photography club also had two trips this year not to count the monthly workshops which sometimes included day trips. Our first trip was to the low country of Georgia and South Carolina hitting Savannah and many spot northward. It was a fantastic trip with a great group of folks. The other trip was the Fall Colors Trip to West Virginia. We were in the New River Gorge National Park area and had wonderful colors and as always a great group of people to photograph and share the experience with.

Over all I had a great year and am looking forward to the next .  I have already started planning for next year and hope to have a busy photography year next year. How was your year? Let me know. Until Next week Get out and shoot!

Hey Ya'll! Hope you're having a great week! This week I wan't to talk about my 35mm film cameras. Which happen to be all Canon's. I can tell you that this was not a planned thing and I have never really been a Canon fan before but there you go. When it comes to film I'm a Canon Shooter.  I have 3 main 35mm cameras that I use.  The Canon AE-1 Program, Canon Canonet QL17 G3, and the newly acquired Canon Demi EE 17 half frame camera. Now I have several other 35mm cameras but these have become my main ones mainly due to the great lenses they have.  Although they are all 35mm cameras they are not the same. Like an assortment of fine screwdrivers they each have a specific role like different tools in a toolbox.

The first one that I got was the Canon Canonet QL 17. I was really looking for a rangefinder type of camera. Leicas were well out of my price range so I started lookin for a camera that would fill this need that I wanted to fill. I discovered this camera through hours and hours of research. First I bought a Canonet 19 the earlier big brother to the QL 17 and it took good photo's but the 1961 model was large and heavy and I had to use a external meter because the meter that's on the Canonet 19 was not working. So I found the QL 17 . It's known as the poor man's Leica.  It's a true rangefinder not just a look a like .  The lens is sharp with lots of contrast and has a 40mm lens with a max aperture of f/1.7. This is a great walk around camera and is great for casual photowalks. With a fixed lens you don't have to worry about extra gear. Fun to shoot and looks good also!

The second Canon I have is the AE-1 Program. One of the most popular camera's ever produced. I got this one from a friend who gifted it to me. The one thing I like about it is the Viewfinder is clear and sharp and focusing is very easy. This camera is the most versatile of these cameras with up to 1/1000 second shutter speed and interchangeable lenses. I purchased a 28mm lens to get this camera kit where I want it. I use this for photowalks and project work. Like my cities and film projects that I'm currently in the process of doing. This is the Cadillac of my 35mm cameras . Love the images that I get out of this camera and it has a grip on it that makes it easy to hold.

The third Canon in the line up is the Canon Demi EE 17. This is a half frame camera. Which means it shoots frames that are half the size of a normal 35mm negative. So you get twice the photo's that you would get with a normal 35mm camera. This will become my companion camera . When I'm shooting digital this small camera will fit in the bag nicely. I will be able to get some film shots without using a lot of film. It has a 30mm f/1.7 lens which is very sharp. You will find this camera in my bag almost all the time whether I'm shooting digital or film it makes a great companion and backup. Its a very fun camera to shoot.

All three of these cameras can shoot in manual and in Shutter priority mode. All of the meters are accurate to 1/2 stop which is fine for the negative print film that I shoot. Will this assortment of camera's change? I'm not thinking so right now but things change. I also shoot digital and medium format film. Photography is so much fun you can live in the past and shoot film and you can take all of that basic work to your digital work flow which makes it better too. My advice would be to explore all of the different types of photography to become a better photographer. So until next week get out and shoot!