Selling Kit

I’ve been very good the last couple of years, I’ve been very good, that sounds as though I, you know, it’s a challenge and a race, it’s far from it… 

Business-wise, the equipment I’ve had over the years has obviously accumulated and more recently, I’ve really honed in on the kit that I use most regularly. I’ve not really bought that much glass recently, other than upgrading specific bits due to things failing on me and that sort of thing. I’ve not gone ostentatious on kit, the kit I’ve got works and it works very well. I don’t need lots and lots of extra kit; it’s only tidying around the edges of things that could enhance things a little bit. I’ve got an extra light recently to allow me to split my systems between me and Karl and just give us more flexibility out on site and sending Karl on jobs. 

 But it’s certainly made me realise, looking at the collection of stuff that I’ve accumulated over the years, to do with my ADHD slightly – I’m not really a hoarder, my wife would probably say otherwise, but I’m not really. But there’s enough cameras lying around in my office that I should be selling because I don’t use them and won’t use them again, so I need to get rid. But I sold one recently, as it goes, and it was kind of hard, because it was my main camera for a good four or five years, it was a Canon 5D Mark 4, and it really served its time and really did a cracking job doing that. But, it’s not been used since I went mirrorless. And so I sold it to a guy, landscape photographer and he’s already sent me pictures, absolutely loving it, it’s a great bit of kit. But it did make me go, ‘Oh, that’s been on some travels. It’s had a journey.’ 

(Yes, obviously the shutter count was significantly high, don’t worry, he was aware of that when he bought it, he thought I’d typed it wrong! Yeah, he thought I was meaning 25,000 shutter count, when I’d wrote 250,000 and yeah, it was definitely the 250,000 that was correct. I wish it was 25,000, I could have got more money for it!) 

 But then there’s still two or three cameras to sell there that I just need to get round to selling. And again, they’ve got memories as well. Well less so the 60, I should really be selling that one, it was always a back-up camera. But the 5D Mark 3, I mean it’s a very old camera now and it’s not worth very much money at all and it’s battered completely. It very much was the first real professional camera that I had. 

I think I had 7D’s before that, which were very good. Croft Centre Cameras 5D Mark3 was the first full-frame camera I had and it was a really good camera and it really did serve its time and over the years I’ve used it as a back-up, until it really died on its shutter and I upgraded to the R5. 

So this isn’t a reminscey post about things or anything, but it was more just a realisation that kit can serve its time and it needs to go. And you know, reclaiming any money off it is a good thing, but it’s also good to look back on it and go, ‘Yeah, at the time they were cutting edge bits of kit and they really did serve their time.’ 

And it’s amazing how much equipment has moved on. Because actually, when I first started as a photographer, I can go back to kind of 400D, I can go to 7D, I can go to 5D Mark 3, I can go to 5D Mark 4 and then R5, so I’ve not actually had that many iterations of camera over that time period. The R6 came and went in there as a back-up camera, same as a second R7, there was only two R7’s for a while. But and now I’ve got the R6 that sits next to the R5. It’s always good to have that back-up and another camera at the ready, but yes it’s always been Canon, the RVS, I’ve been tempted to switch onto the various switches that photographers do. The big shift to Sony was very tempting back in the day, the shift to Fuji was very tempting when Fuji went mad with the XT3. 

Whereas now, I’m still really happy with the R5, it’s a very good hybrid camera for the very small bits of video stuff that I do. It’s a fantastic bit of kit, along with the photos being really, really good quality and obviously it works with all of my lighting kit and all of my various lenses that I’ve acquired over the years and still use to this day. Some of the slightly more obscure ones, like my macro lens was used recently for product stuff, my 150-600 has been used on recent shoots for North Tyneside Council, capturing surfers and that sort of stuff. 

So it’s just great to have that flexibility with the glass and not have to mess around with last minute hires for specific jobs and that sort of thing which, granted, probably financially is a better way of doing things. I know a lot of photographers do it that way. It’s just I’ve been able to justify buying them when needed on certain jobs.
But yeah, equipment’s significantly important to the business. 

But as you can see, I’ve not changed things too much over the 17 years since I started on this photography journey with a 400D, something like that, 2007-ish.