A point of contention amongst photographers everywhere who are budgeting for their new gear is one question, “What should I invest most in when upgrading my photography equipment, the camera body or the lens?” This can be a rather complicated answer, as it does depend on the type of photography that you’re interested in doing. So in this blog we will learn the importance of both and when you should invest in new camera body or lens?
The Lens:
First we will talk about the importance of new lens and why you should invest in lenses, ask yourself a question: “What is the most important part of your SLR or mirrorless camera?” If you just replied ‘the camera body’, you’re onto something, but you’d be wrong. The answer is “the lens”. Most of time people ignore the fact that how important the lenses are, if you are thinking about investing in new gear then you should definitely consider buying a new lens depending on your genre of photography. Look at it as a long term investment you can use your lens with other camera body of same brand, so you can use the same lens with your new camera body if you upgrade in future.
Lenses are very important as it gather and focus light. Light strikes the front surface of the lens and passes through the glass element. Keeping this in mind, the difference between a good lens and a bad lens is that the former does a much better job at producing properly illuminated and sharp images. Lenses vary in focal length, aperture, type of glass, and so much more.
If you want are into wildlife photography then you should definitely buy a zoom lens as the camera body have nothing to do with the zoom capacity, and if you want shoot portraits then you should buy a prime lens as they’re really best for the portraits, so invest in the best lens you can afford as it will add up to your gears and you can use it with your future camera bodies without any problem.
The Camera Body:
The body of the camera contains all of the important controls necessary to record digital pictures. The camera is basically a container to house the sensor and the lens along with the electronics and controls. Camera bodies come in all shapes, sizes, and weights.
The camera body is also very important as the camera body is what you’ll hold most in your hands and its comfort is very important when shooting for long hours. Higher end cameras also have better weather sealing than lower end cameras. From a logistics perspective, different camera bodies allow you to control more or fewer aspects of the picture taking process. So choose your camera body carefully and if you are already using a particular brand’s camera then you should upgrade with the same brand’s camera as you will be able to use your old lens with new camera and this will definitely save you money and it will be easy for you to use the camera as you are already familiar with the user interface of the brand.
The camera body you use will affect the dynamic range of your images, amount of noise in low light, a significant part of the autofocus, the frames-per-second, and the megapixel count (among many other things, but the aforementioned are the most commonly referenced). The camera body is what influences the number of pixels in a photograph and how fast you can shoot. So choose the camera body carefully as a lot of parameter of photography depends on the camera body also.
Final Thoughts:
Both the camera body and the Lens are important. But in my personal opinion the lens are more important as in regard to financial investment, a good lens is the better choice because it’ll last you much longer than the body (as you’ll generally be changing camera bodies faster than lenses). The lens also opens the door for you to create the images you dream of making.
So next time you want to invest in your photography tools don’t forget to think about the lens.
What you feel is more important and why? Let us know in the comment section.
