How to learn photography on a tight budget

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I know what some people are thinking – nice pictures and all, I’d like to learn how to do something similar, but I don’t have the money for equipment that costs this much; is there a cheaper option, and by cheaper I mean almost free?

In fact, yes. There is. However, what you need to do is completely ignore everything a professional photographer would get, and buy something on the complete sidelines, because where there’s interest there’s demand, and where there’s demand, the prices are high. So, let’s say you have a really tight budget, 200 EUR or so. Let’s say your target image quality is a 4K wallpaper or an A3/B3 print. Let’s say you want a starter kit and you don’t care about infinite upgradability in the future, because you can always sell this for as much as you paid for it, and get something more expensive if you run into money.

In this case, I recommend the Olympus Four Thirds kit, a camera with two lenses:

In this specific case, it’s the 8MP E-300 body with 40-150mm and 14-45mm lenses, which are excellent. What can you do with that? How about this:

Or this sample I took with the same lens (ZD 14-45mm) when I had it for review:

The camera I used was E-500, but E-300 has the same sensor, so the colours and clarity would be identical. So, that’s what you get for 200 EUR, plus the budget for fresh batteries and a tripod. What are the limitations? You don’t get the super shallow depth of field unless you focus very close at the maximum aperture and focal length, and even then you can’t blur everything out. However, blurring everything out isn’t necessarily all of photography, and learning the composition is more important. If you want to blur everything out with Four Thirds, you will need the ZD 50mm f/2 macro, and that one is actually cheap for what it is:

What it is, is one of my personal all-time favourite lenses; it renders images as beautifully as the FE 90mm f/2.8 G macro for Sony. It’s an absolutely stellar lens, and you can get it used for 140 EUR. What can it do? Everything my ZD 14-54mm could do at maximal magnification, but more and better, crisper and brighter:

If you want wider angle, there’s the ZD 9-18mm f/4-5.6 but it’s not quite inexpensive; around 270 EUR:

That’s 18-36mm equivalent, so not extreme, but very good. ZD 7-14mm f/4 is the best, but that one is 600 EUR, so probably not something you would consider as a budget option. However, 200 for the body and two lens kit, 140 EUR for the macro/portrait lens and 270 EUR for the ultrawide equals 610 EUR for the four lens kit, in excellent optical quality, where the main limitation is the camera body, and you can later get an adapter for the micro four thirds, get an OM-D body with 20MP and there you go; but of course that is additional money; the MMF-1 adapter is 144 EUR, Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV with 20.3MP is 500 EUR. The entire set in the ultimate upgrade path will set you back 1254 EUR. That’s four lenses, two bodies and the adapter, and with those 20.3MP files you can print B2/B1 sizes, which means up to meter wide. Sure, 1254 EUR is a lot, but you can start with 200 and upgrade over time; I’m just saying you’re not boxed in.

So yes, it can be done on a budget. You can get two very nice lenses and an obsolete body that still creates beautiful colours, and as you learn, you can see what you want, and what you don’t. Most important of all, if your images suck, you can blame the equipment. 🙂

Adapter

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I received the 7artisans Canon EF -> Sony FE adapter, which is to replace the old Viltrox Mk III which caused scary electrical freezes of the A7RV body, so I ordered a replacement.

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8, 7artisans adapter, Sony A7II

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8, 7artisans adapter, Sony A7II

The new adapter works, I tested it on both A7RV and A7II, with EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye, EF 85mm f/1.8 and EF 50mm f/1.8 STM. The samples are shot with EF 85mm f/1.8 wide open on A7II. Autofocus works, even on the 85mm, which is surprising since AF on that one failed to work at all on the earlier adapters. It’s glitchy, so “exit and enter again” is a thing, but even continuous AF works on the A7RV, which is unexpected but welcome. Yeah, CA on the 85mm Canon, when shooting into the light, are nasty, but otherwise the lens is creamy and sharp. The 15mm fisheye is sharp enough on the 61MP body at f/8, and the files would produce very nice B1 prints; however, even at f/5.6 and f/11 there is a visible loss of sharpness, and outside those apertures the result is not of prime quality, to put it mildly.

Assessment

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There was a relatively strong earthquake in Campi Flegrei last night, initially assessed at 4.4 MMS, later revised to 4.2. Everything above 2 there is significant, as it indicates magma movements and possible ruptures. 4.2 is really serious, and adds serious weight to the Bayesian probability of explosive eruption in the near future. Whether the eruption will be phreatic or supervolcanic, it is impossible to say. A phreatic eruption is what happened at Krakatoa, when magma and sea water came into contact within the enclosed space of the half-emptied magma chamber. It is what a pressure cooker would do if the pressure inside exceeded the cohesive forces within the containment vessel. It means a big boom that cooks the people of the local village in superheated steam. That place needed to be evacuated weeks ago. However, other than boiling a few thousands of people alive, the phreatic eruption poses no danger to the wider area. A supervolcanic eruption, VEI 8, however, would end most of Europe. So, the danger of natural events regionally remains high.

As for the political and military events, Trump is performing a circus where America, as a party in conflict that attacked Russia and wanted to destroy it as a country and surround it with enemies and do a regime change in every country that believes in two genders, is now roleplaying as a peace maker of some sorts, as if they’re a school teacher forcing some kids to make up or else. The Russians will politely tell him to piss off, to which he’ll do the typical Trump thing and threaten them with a big stick, forgetting that the Russians have already destroyed more than half of US and European military in Ukraine, and that American “mercenaries” have been killing Russians in Kursk, Russia, for months. This has all the potential of ending badly, because the Russians have already told Putin not to even think about any kind of “truce” or “ceasefire”. I see people behaving as this war is about to end, but on the contrary, I think it’s nearing the most explosive phase, where one bad miscalculation by America will result in instant massive retaliation. I am treating this as “all hell is about to break loose” until proven otherwise.

If you ask why is France so pissed at Russia, it’s because the entire West had a plan of blocking Russia, and intending on compensating for the raw materials they were getting from Russia by turning to Africa, and the Russians understood the plan and completely destroyed it by making deals with African countries that resulted in France and other former colonial powers being unceremoniously evicted and their access to near-free resources ended. As a result, France’s access to low-cost uranium for their power plants and military has been compromised and they are strategically fucked.

Trump, on the other hand, is acting as if America is the big boy in charge, but this is all a bluff. America is bankrupt, their military is defunct and depleted, and other than the decrepit nuclear weapons that are way past their expiration date, they have nothing except the printing press for money, which is currently backed by nothing but brute force. Essentially, the entire West is a starving parasite trying to latch itself onto resources to prolong its doomed existence, and in absence of the usual victims, the vampires are now trying to suck off each other, and it’s going to be a nasty sight.

So yeah, far from it being over; we haven’t actually seen anything but overture yet.

Why?

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All kinds of things are going through my mind since I wrote about my recent equipment purchases, and I guess at least some of those come from people who think they are my mommy and are in a position to ask me why I need those things, and can’t I do it with less expensive gear?

It’s interesting how that goes – I mean the challenge of “can’t you do it with less? are you cool enough?” I guess the original challenge came from Satan himsef – “do you really need God’s presence with you every single moment? can’t you do it on your own? can’t you do it with less? are you cool enough?”

And then it’s an infinite progression: do you really need siddhis if you have hands? Do you need good conditions or you can do it in bad ones? Do you need a proper house or you can live in a trailer? Do you really need the trailer, or you can live in a tent? Do you really need a new car, wouldn’t a used one do? Do you need a BMW, what’s wrong with Skoda? And if you keep proving that you can do with less, you get to see your enemy giggle as you struggle in endless misery and deprivation while he can say it was all your choice, because you could, in fact, just tell him to fuck off at any point.

Yes, I can do photography with super inexpensive equipment, and in fact I did. If that part ever needed proving, it was proven long time ago, and I don’t see why I should keep repeating the exercise. I did it with a 50 EUR film body with a 50 EUR lens from the 1980s on film and the result looked like this:

I also did it with the E-PL1 pocket m43 camera with its collapsible kit lens:

Yes, I already did it with less. It can be done. However, I disliked the experience and refuse to repeat it if I have a choice, because I also used some of the most expensive and high-quality cameras and lenses in the world and I liked the experience a lot; it’s just that I couldn’t afford them at the time. Today, the question I’m interested in isn’t “can I do it with less”, but instead “what’s the absolute best equipment I could get, that would be the best match for what I want to do, where getting more would actually detract from practicality and overall experience?”, which is the point where I got the best 35mm gear instead of the medium format Hasselblad. Because, why not? That’s my answer to “why”, and “can’t you do it with less?” – “why not”, and “why would I even have to, or care to?”

The answer is to take the absolute best, not because you deserve it or you proved you can’t do it with less, because you choose to and you can, and the best of all is God. Choose God above all, and if someone tries to challenge you to try to do it with less, tell him to fuck off, and ask him, who chose less and is less, how is it working for him?

There are always enemies who would want you to have less and who would love to get you in a game where you try to make it work with less, to their great satisfaction. God knows there are bastards who are still following me like vultures checking whether I died yet, or at least if I’m showing signs of spiritual degradation and fall, so that they can feel justified in hating me. They would really like to see me live in a cardboard box under some bridge, trying to make it with least possible, while they laugh like hiyenas.

So, fuck you, that’s why. The choice for the best should never even have to be justified, because choosing the best when it’s an option just proves that your mind is working properly.

ps. Also, I just thought of a very simple way of putting it. Hardship occasionally needs to be endured, but it should never be invited.