What camera do I use???

If you wanna know what camera I used to take that puddle reflection please read this article :)

Very often the people ask me what camera and lenses I use. I know is very important to use great gear in order to make great photos/videos but today I know that gear doesn't make a great photo and I'm going to explain you why.

When I started in photography some years ago I had a little Canon camera that I bought for €300 (Canon PowerShot SX210 IS). It was small and light, nothing spectacular but good for trips or photos in the city. Here some examples of pics I took with it:

After a couple of years I decided to buy something more "professional" because even if I was not a professional photographer I wanted to make very good photos and feel proud of them. So I bought a Canon 550D. I think it costed me around €750. I was very happy with that camera and I used it a lot but after a year I found myself still unhappy with my photos... I couldn't make the GREAT shot, they were simple photos that anybody could take. I was frustrated!!! Some examples here:

I blamed the camera to be responsible of this lack of creativeness, greatness and colourfulness of my photos... so I made a big mistake and I bought another camera, bigger and "professional" with a better lens and of course much more expensive. I bought a Canon 5D Mark II with the 24-105mm F4L and the 50mm 1.8 lenses for almost €3000.

Back then I was doing photography as a hobby... and it was becoming a very expensive one (I was not making a penny out of it). Of course my goal was to become a great photographer one day and sell my photos.

With that camera I was feeling like a pro hahahaha! After some months I realized that the photos were still boring. Sometimes I could make a good photo but not always, and again I felt frustrated and I almost quit photography, until one day...

...I was watching some stuff on YouTube and I had the idea to look for videos related to photography and how to make good photos. I found many many videos but I didn't understand them very well because they were too advanced for me so I decided to look for photography for beginners.

I found a guy, Mark Wallace. His channel was very simple and easy to understand. After watching the first videos I realized why my photos were so boring: I have ALWAYS shot in Automatic mode!!! I let the camera "think" for me and take the photos for me, the only thing that I was doing was to click the shutter bottom. I felt very stupid for blaming the camera for those boring photos and happy at the same time because finally I was going to take the nice photos I've always wanted.

I learnt about Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, Exposure and Composition. Then I learnt how to use my camera. The manual was too big and boring so I looked for some video tutorials.

Finally my dream of making good photos was becoming real. After A LOT of practice and education I finally made good photos, started to sell them and got some recognition of my work.

After all these years I realized that the more important thing in photography is not the camera or the lenses. The MORE important thing is what is 5cm BEHIND the camera (YOU)!!! and if you want to make good photos you need to become better by STUDYING and PRACTICING! There is no other way.

Now days I shoot with the Olympus PenF, different Canon cameras, a GoPro and also with my iPhone 7. (By the way, I took the photo of the puddle reflection of the lady riding the bicycle on the streets of Paris with the iPhone7).

Please let me know what you think about this topic!