LocalNavy433 Photography

Hello and how the hell are you?  If this is your first time here thanks for stopping by.  In this blog we are going to talk about the one tip if you will that changed my photography forever.  We all have been sitting there looking at our images and struggling with the feeling of not getting the images like others are.  The next step is we either learn a new technique or spend time researching a new piece of gear.  Well this is what happened to me and how it changed the way I shoot.  

The way this starts is as simple as studying another photographers work.  I was on Instagram looking at images for inspiration and I was lost in the scroll as we all do from time to time.  I was looking at all these great images and seeing how he or she was taking the photos.  I looked at the compositions studying how they work and how to get my images to be better.  This lead me to believe that it was the gear that made the images so good.  The fact is they were all shooting with gear that was at the supposed next level of gear that I thought that I was needing.  

This was backed up with all the YouTube creators saying that you need this type of lens to get this type of shot.  I was heavy into learning how to shoot the Milky Way at the time so I was under the impression that I needed a really fast lens in order to get the shots that they were getting.  The reason that I was thinking that I needed a special lens was everyone and I mean everyone was stating that you need at least a f2.8 lens to get a shot of the stars and the kit lens was not good enough.  SO in my mind it meant that I needed to buy another lens.  

This was also backed up with the fact that all the personalities were saying that you need a full frame body in order to truly capture the night sky.  Now I not only needed a new lens I also needed a better camera.  The whole issue with all this was at the time I didn’t have the money to go spend on all this gear that I was going to “need” in order to get the shots that I thought I wanted and needed.  The issue was marketing and that went as far as the YouTubers that I was watching in order to learn.  When you are in the learning phase of photography you tend to listen to the people that you look up to teaching you what you truly need to get the best of the best images.  

The truth was that the only thing that I needed to do was get out there and learn to shoot for the shots that I wanted with the gear that I had at the moment.  You see the one thing that they don’t tell you when you are trying to learn something new is that the gear that you have is good enough to get out there and practice.  I had a lens that went down to f3.5 which is one stop higher than 2.8 so technically that should be good enough to get the shot right.  The short answer is yes it is good enough for you to get out there and shoot.  When you are looking at getting a piece of gear to help you out means that you are trying to get a piece of gear that will make it easier.  The fact is the f2.8 lens is going to let in more light which will make getting the shot easier.  In the end that kit lens that you got with your camera is good enough to get a great Milky Way image.  

With any type of photography the gear allows for a certain look to an image but technique on how to use the gear that you have will allow you to get the same type of image.  The f3.5 is going to stop as much light coming into the lens to hit the sensor but here is the good part the stars will be slightly sharper using the f3.5 instead of the f2.8.  Now this should be were you are starting to see why I have always said that the kit lens is good enough for you starting out.  That kit lens is capable of getting sharp clean images of the night skies.  

I can say this because I have done it and the key to the tip that I am trying to give you is to learn how to shoot with the lower end gear it will make you a better photographer in the long run in my opinion.  I mean if you can achieve a certain type of image with the lower end gear what do you think your images will look like when you have that high end gear.  In truth I still shoot with my kit lens to this day and you will never know what shots I have used it for.  I mean some of my best Milky Way images was shot with the “kit lens” the 18-55 f3.5-5.6 lens.  The fact is once you learn how to process the images in post that is where they take that next level jump.  

I mean if you were to give me a Canon Rebel t6 and the kit lens and ask me to go shoot the Milky Way with it I would not only walk away with a killer image I would be able to post it online and no one would know what gear I used to shoot it.  The reason for that is I know the weaknesses of the camera and lens together.  I know that shooting at higher iso’s gives you a lot of noise.  This would mean that I need to shoot about 30 images for the sky to stack to denoise the image.  I would also shoot the foreground during the blue hour to get it at a lower iso giving me a clean noiseless foreground.  I would also focus stack the image because of the fact that the lens is no where near as sharp as the higher end lenses.  So it all comes down to knowing your gear and learning how to overcome the faults of it.  This one tip will allow you to improve your photography.  

Thanks for stopping by and I hope this helped you in the ever growing problem in photography.  Remember enjoy from St Johns AZ y’all.

Side note all the images posted on this blog were shot with a entry level DSLR or Mirrorless camera and the 18-55 kit lens for each system.