Having been a photographer for over 20+ years I’ve had the pleasure to use a mix of lenses, bodies, brands.

I’ve seen people pixel peeping and making sure that their images are so sharp, that you could almost cut yourself!

Brands are bringing out bigger, brighter, and better bodies almost monthly in a bid to be ‘brand of the year’ and with those brands comes megapixel perfection! 24mp, 40mp and some even 100mp plus.

Lenses have become increasingly clearer, with better and better glass including Zeiss, Sony G master, Sigma Art, Canon Rf, there are so many it’s hard to name them all and to keep up!

With that, comes the cost! The price of quality comes at a premium. And sometimes that’s where those starting out differ from those who are well established and possibly have a bank balance to burn.

Media shows us that the best images/video make the cut! To stand out you need to have 4/8k video or 100mp images with perfect colours, the right depth of field and beautiful bokeh!

But do we need this ! The tools help us create higher quality content but depending on what you’re doing with the output image it’s not the best all and end all!

I’m not done here but, Whats your opinion? Leave a comment

The last few weeks I’ve been sharing images to a number of media outlets! Including and not limited to printed products, social platforms, websites and even local news papers.

All of which have been images taken using all different brands/quality of body and or lens variations. I’ve had amazing feedback on the images with people sharing them, comments left, right and centre, and over the last 4 months seen images picked for publication without any question of … what camera brand, lens, pixel amount those images were taken with.

This has lead me to question whether we need the best of the best and do we need to buy the latest version of our chosen brands, because something new has been added to the latest version.

So last week I set myself a challenge! Get published with low quality gear!

Now I shoot with two brands Sony and Nikon, I have two cameras of each brand! Not going to be specific with models. Or details. But I set myself some basic rules that the lens choice had to stick to;

• Priced under £100.
• Had to be second hand.
• Needed to be multi use. (Landscape / macro / zoom etc)
• Had to fit kit I owned.
• Didn’t need to be brand specific. (Like Nikon for Nikon or Sony for Sony)

So I popped to the local camera shops with the mind set of getting a telephoto lens, that possibly has macro brand of Sigma or Tamron.

It didn’t take long to find the candidate! the Tamron 70-300 macro lens,

For starters, it seems like it has a lot going for it. It’s both telephoto and macro and looking in the window of the local Camera World. It’s under £100 by £5 and walking past Cex I see it for even less £85 well it’s looking more and more appealing. But times run away and blooming shop was shut! So guess it’s not meant to be!

But now I have an idea of what I’m looking for– Time to head home!

With the shops shut what will any tech guy do ! Yes head to the big World Wide Web! And the trusty MPB. For those that don’t know about MPB. They are a fantastic online company buying and selling all things photography. I’ve used them many times for lenses and bodies, so it will always be my next stop if local shops don’t have what I’m wanting.

If you want to save money, stick around for a link to saving £20 on any new purchase. At MPB.com

Back to searching! So a few clicks later and it’s on screen, there was three available for sale second hand and it didn’t come as a shock but the price was OVER half the cost of camera world and CEX

I didn’t waste time! Clicked the buy button and sorted out the details and just two days later there it was on the door step! Now ! You can see that this one is classed as GOOD condition.. and for the sum of £41 can’t really ask for much more ! Personally I think the rating was a little low! Opening the box of this very well wrapped up product soon showed me it was great condition! And like always ! I couldn’t wait to try it ! So with my trusted model I snapped the first shots …

Okay first off this lens isn’t fantastic ! But again what more could you ask for from a lens that’s not brand new, that’s been out years, possibly been used a lot. Though the look of the lens seems like it’s been in a bag and not used for a while.. but on testing showed its self to be pretty sharp, focused after a couple of clicks and focus motor wasn’t too loud either !

TOUCH WOOD ! ALL GOOD! So far

Now to get some pictures and see if I can get published 🙂

The next day came and I thought I would head to town to get some local shop / location pictures

These are the pictures I captured.

Again these images are not perfect, but pretty clear and the best I could get at 70mm. Now to post them to the pages that could potentially take my images and make publications out of 1 or more!

A week later looks what happened! Here is one of the images in the local news paper.

It’s not perfect but it’s still a publication.. and I still haven’t really used the lens to its full potential. Yet..

This shows that any quality of lens and camera body has the potential. You don’t need the all singing all dancing gear ..

Don’t get me wrong having the best gear will make things a little easier or even have a better quality overall but this shows it’s not all about spending £1000’s on gear … you can do it on a budget if need be …

Maybe it’s all in the eye of the photographer and his editing skills 😉

Watch this space for more on this lens and using low quality lenses to get published and paid work !

Get £20 off for your first purchase at MPB. By clicking the link below! This is a promotion and I believe a limited time offer! If asked use code Adrian Day at checkout.