What was your best investment in 2023 and why?
Curious what are you favourite photography related purchases in 2023... and why?
My favourite purchase this year was a desktop computer that I built specifically for photo editing. Until now I've only run Linux on my personal computers but I wanted to try Luminar Neo and On 1 Photo Raw which run on Windows or Mac. So, I made my laptop dual boot with Windows. But, despite having an external graphics card the photo editors I tried ran painfully slow. That's when I decided to go all in and build a desktop PC just for photo editing. I'm so glad I did because it has made a huge difference in my efficiency and enjoyment of editing my photos. I can yank sliders around and see previews instantly and smoothly. I'm no pro at editing but learning how to edit photos is something I'm starting to persue a bit more seriously.
What's been your best investment in photography this year? A camera? Lens? Bag? Maybe a photo trip?
Quote from grover on December 30, 2023, 4:05 amCurious what are you favourite photography related purchases in 2023... and why?
My favourite purchase this year was a desktop computer that I built specifically for photo editing. Until now I've only run Linux on my personal computers but I wanted to try Luminar Neo and On 1 Photo Raw which run on Windows or Mac. So, I made my laptop dual boot with Windows. But, despite having an external graphics card the photo editors I tried ran painfully slow. That's when I decided to go all in and build a desktop PC just for photo editing. I'm so glad I did because it has made a huge difference in my efficiency and enjoyment of editing my photos. I can yank sliders around and see previews instantly and smoothly. I'm no pro at editing but learning how to edit photos is something I'm starting to persue a bit more seriously.
What's been your best investment in photography this year? A camera? Lens? Bag? Maybe a photo trip?
I also did this about 2 years ago. I had a laptop that was just not cutting it for photo editing and so I built I purpose built desktop for it and it's such a pleasant experience to edit now and being able to finely adjust in real time, rather than moving a slider and then waiting is such a big quality of life improvement. I also picked up an OLED monitor this year for editing and it's great. It's not the drastic improvement I thought it would be over a nice IPS panel, but it is definitely noticeable.
I think personally my favorite photography investment was a photography class I took. I didn't learn much in terms of using a camera, but it connected me to a community of people who also enjoyed photography or being creative. I looked forward to going to class and sharing my photos and talking with people about their shots. It was very motivating and a ton of fun. It reignited the passion for photography for me. I also met several people who wanted to go out and shoot together or model for me and it's allowed me to do new kinds of photography which is exciting.
This is a great question. I don't know if I could narrow it down to one, but just the exercise of trying to answer the question of "best investment" proved valuable. Here's what I thought of:
Shelving, dedicated drawers for batteries/chargers/memory cards etc. All the organization stuff helped a bunch just find things when I needed them.
I bought a nice strap that can be detached and attached to another camera very quickly. Both the comfort of a nice strap, how nice it looks, and the ease of switching it to my active camera has been a game changer. I resented it because straps can cost so much sometimes ($60??) but worth it for the time it saves me.
Time spent learning video editing software has been great. Not that I'm great, but I'm better than I was before, haha. On that same note, time/money spent on trips and experiences has paid off every time.
Selling stuff was a good investment. Sounds weird, but having less means less time thinking about camera or lens to bring and more time just shooting (which is what we all want anyway, haha).
All my camera/lens purchases have been fun this year, but nothing would qualify as my "Best investment" necessarily. Just cool stuff. Good stuff. In years past I've had some game changer lenses/cameras, but now I just have them and use them and I don't know if I need anything else at this point other than to get better!
Great question!
I like the idea of learning how to make video, James! Maybe I will steal that idea for 2024. 🙂
For me, the best investments in 2023 are mostly accessories for product shots like backdrop and glass tabletop. I think having good photos on ebay or other platforms make a big difference on how much I end up selling stuff. I also have been buying and fixing broken Pentax bodies with aperture block lately and its been funding my other purchases easily. Have fixed about 5 last year and always sold them triple the price I bought them for.
Worth mentioning is the Sony A7S with Samyang 45mm 1.8. I know the camera is old but been trying to dive into videography lately and this old camera can shoot ISO 51200 and the video is surprisingly very useable at least in my eyes as a casual user. Pretty decent for photos too as long as I shoot RAW as the JPEG engine sucks.
K-3iii! By far my favorite camera to use ever and makes me want to get out and shoot more than anything. It's all the little things about it that add up to make it more than the sum of its parts. So much fun factor for me.
For me it would have to be the Viltrox 23mm F1.4, this lens along with the ZVE10 took so many nice family pics. Our condo is in a low rise building in a high rise area so being dark the bright aperture and reliable focus captured so many moments that other setups I had would’ve (and previously did) missed.
Some late 2023 purchases that will yield good results in 2024 are the G9 (600EUR with less than 100 sc) and the viewfinder for the Ricoh GXR A12 M mount module. Manual focus off the back screen was almost impossible to see but the viewfinder has helped greatly so I expect this setup will be used more often from now on
Quote from James Warner on December 31, 2023, 4:11 am
I bought a nice strap that can be detached and attached to another camera very quickly. Both the comfort of a nice strap, how nice it looks, and the ease of switching it to my active camera has been a game changer. I resented it because straps can cost so much sometimes ($60??) but worth it for the time it saves me.
Peak Design?
I sort of "inherited" a bunch of older, but really nice Nikon stuff. But being that my only investment was having repairs. minor at that done I don't have much skin in the game so that should not really count.
I purchased for myself a like new Think Tank Retrospective 7M bag from MPB. This one:
Its smaller than I expected. Supposedly you can carry a DSLR with 24-70 a 70-200 2.8 and a flash? You could shoehorn that stuff in but it would be like 10lbs of sausage in a 5lb casing.
The bag turned out to be so nice and I got really cheap (under 70 bucks from MBP) I could not bring myself to return it.
I just threw the D810 in it with a prime and an old 80-200 f4 zoom, in addition to all the stuff I carry daily that's non photo related. A book, earbuds, medication, pens, chargers etc. So it's like a camera bag / man purse. Ha!
The size of this bag got me thinking of picking up a Micro 4/3 camera. I've been contemplating such future purchase for doing tiny bug photography.
This might be the perfect bag for apsc Pentax, Fuji or Sony system.
Quote from KankRat on January 10, 2024, 6:14 pmQuote from James Warner on December 31, 2023, 4:11 am
I bought a nice strap that can be detached and attached to another camera very quickly. Both the comfort of a nice strap, how nice it looks, and the ease of switching it to my active camera has been a game changer. I resented it because straps can cost so much sometimes ($60??) but worth it for the time it saves me.
Peak Design?
Not Peak Design, though I do like their (expensive) stuff. It was a Moment branded strap. Also super expensive, but functionally amazing:
Quote from KankRat on January 11, 2024, 7:11 pmI sort of "inherited" a bunch of older, but really nice Nikon stuff. But being that my only investment was having repairs. minor at that done I don't have much skin in the game so that should not really count.
I purchased for myself a like new Think Tank Retrospective 7M bag from MPB. This one:
Its smaller than I expected. Supposedly you can carry a DSLR with 24-70 a 70-200 2.8 and a flash? You could shoehorn that stuff in but it would be like 10lbs of sausage in a 5lb casing.
The bag turned out to be so nice and I got really cheap (under 70 bucks from MBP) I could not bring myself to return it.
I just threw the D810 in it with a prime and an old 80-200 f4 zoom, in addition to all the stuff I carry daily that's non photo related. A book, earbuds, medication, pens, chargers etc. So it's like a camera bag / man purse. Ha!
The size of this bag got me thinking of picking up a Micro 4/3 camera. I've been contemplating such future purchase for doing tiny bug photography.
This might be the perfect bag for apsc Pentax, Fuji or Sony system.
That's a beautiful looking bag! Pity about it being smaller than expected, but I actually kind of like that. I've gone away from bigger bags because I always fill them up with extra stuff I don't need. The smaller bags keep me honest with my gear for a trip and I'm way more comfortable. Of course, you need to carry a 70-200 f2.8 around sometimes, so bigger bags are necessary.
