Best Camera, Lenses & Photo Editing For Beginner Photography

hi guys what's up Jessica bassy here so when you're first starting out in photography it could be extremely intimidating because it can be a lot of information at once so I thought I would make this video to give you guys my personal recommendations on camera bodies that you can start out with as a beginner lenses that you can buy and then photo editing programs that I personally like you know as a beginner photographer you know color grading your your photos and editing them is very important so I definitely want to add that into the mix there are so many cameras out there there are so many lenses that you can get and programs and I just wanted to give you guys my personal recommendations on my favorites when I'm looking for videos on recommendations for things to buy and reviews and stuff like that I really am interested in knowing that person's work and kind of their style of photography because I feel like if their style fits more of my style it's gonna be more helpful to me so I'm a photographer from Detroit I've been doing photography for 8 years I've done everything from senior pictures to baby pictures family pictures weddings I do fashion photography as well I've worked with modeling agencies in places like New York and Los Angeles been using Photoshop from around age 12 to 13 I've been graphic designing for a while so I definitely have a photo editing background as well it's nice to know the person's background so that they can cater to your style photography that you're aiming to do because every photographer is different every photographer is gonna recommend you different things so to begin with I encourage you guys to research other brands other off brands in terms of lenses and camera stuff these are just the ones that I've either personally used or I know friends who have used them that really liked them and recommend them so for the cameras that I'm going to be listing off I would recommend that you guys buy the camera body on its own and not as a kit so a kit basically is the camera body with the lens already so they kind of give it to you already pre chosen but in my opinion the kit lens isn't always the best lens so how this works is that DSLRs come with interchangeable lenses so as you can see I'm pressing this button and I can take this lens off and then what happens is you end up with the camera body on its own and this would be the kit lens the kit lenses are usually the zoom lenses they're good for versatile everyday things but I don't think you can be very artistic with them which is again why I would recommend buying the camera body on its own which will be cheaper and then buying a lens that you personally like that fits your style and here's another lens that I bought separately that you can just mix and match I guess the best way to explain it is kind of like a makeup palette how they have their own brushes within the palette so instead of buying the palette with the brushes the default brushes in there what you could do is buy the palette on its own for a little bit cheaper and then you can go out and buy your own brushes separately you can buy like maybe a better blending brush or whatever brush you want separate to that because sometimes the brushes and the palettes aren't that great there's kind of standard brushes so you're looking for something more specialized into the makeup that you want to do so just think about it like that when you first receive your body only camera it will literally come like this no lens there will be something covering this obviously because this should be protected but you can buy interchangeable lenses based on again your style of photography different focal lengths I think we spend too much money on a kit lens that maybe we don't even end up using the kit lens and it's just you don't even use it and you can spend out on another lens that you really want first camera I would recommend is the Canon Rebel T 6 I've personally used this and I think it's a great beginner camera I think paired with the right lens you really shouldn't have any issues with getting some nice pictures the camera retails for about $350 you could probably buy it cheaper used or refurbished the next camera I'd recommend is the t6i which i think is pretty similar with a little bit of differences to the t6 it's again another good option and it's about the same price so definitely something to consider and to look into so if you're interested in the camera that I started photography with it was the Canon 60d and it's definitely a camera that I recommend because that's the camera I began with and I started my photography journey with it was very easy for me to use and I loved the quality of the images so it's yeah it's definitely something I've recommend pricing is gonna vary you can probably find it on eBay or you can buy it brand new what it looks like online it retails for is about two hundred and sixty dollars another camera that I haven't personally tried but I've worked very closely with people who have used that for both weddings and portrait photography is the Canon 7d and I've heard nothing but good things about it I've also seen the pictures that it takes my friends have shown me the pictures one of my second shooters uses it for the weddings that we shoot together and the quality is amazing by the way if you're looking into a bundle and it comes with the kit lens and it's kind of the same price as the camera body you might as well buy it with the kit lens it's not gonna hurt to have an extra lens so it's only if the price difference is gonna be substantially lowered to buy the camera body on its own and that's gonna vary from entry-level to more professional so now let's talk about the lenses which I think really transform the picture honestly lenses are very important you can get a really nice picture with just the right lens the lens that I absolutely always recommend that I started with as a photographer is the Canon 50 millimeter one point four lens I absolutely love this lens a cheaper alternative to the one point four which I believe is about 300 to 400 dollars would be the 1.8 and that would retail for 125 dollars so this lens would be great for portraits I don't know I've seen your pictures family pictures you can use it for a variety of things it's very lightweight it's versatile it is a prime lens keep in mind so and let me show you guys there are zoom lenses and then there are prime lenses so prime lenses do not assume they are at a fixed focal length so you would have to physically move forward and backwards if you wanted to zoom in and out definitely the 50 being at an f-stop of 1.4 1.8 will be able to let in more light and give you a more creamy you know light photo I'm gonna try and not confuse everybody with the f-stop talk but 1.8 versus this one which is a 3.5 prime lenses are able to let in more light so just think of it as a circle so maybe 1.8 let's just say would be this wide whereas 3.5 would be maybe that small so it won't let in as much light so definitely I prefer prime lenses so I like to recommend them to people when they're first starting out in photography but I think it is important to have a zoom lens which will be my next recommendation I have personally used this lens and I really liked it it was the 70 to 300 millimeter and it's at f/4 25.6 and you can buy this used for about one hundred and fifty nine dollars I think this is a great zoom lens for wedding photography if you're doing portraiture I mean it gives you a variety of options and it's something good to have in your kit when you're first starting out so another recommendation is the 85 millimeter 1.8 lens and this retails for about three hundred dollars online this lens is going to be super close when you first use this lens especially on a crop sensor you're gonna notice that you have to back up a lap so the person let's say the person might be right here you're gonna have to step all the way back here to be able to maybe even get a head shot so it is a very close closely zoomed in lens it's 85 millimeters I think this lens is amazing for things like headshots close-up portraits I think anyone who wants to get into portraits should invest in this lens $300 is actually really good for the 85 the 85 1.2 is like thousands of dollars so the 1.8 is definitely a good option another lens that is my absolute favorite that I use religiously is the 24 to 70 millimeter it's f4 and use you can buy it at around 400 to 600 dollars it's a little bit more on the pricier side but if you're considering doing maybe street photography and maybe even wedding photography I use this for a lot of my weddings I think it's great it has a good focal length for it especially as a zoom lens so definitely something to consider again it's not the pricier side but if you're able to invest in it I definitely would recommend that lens it's one of my favorites so just a quick recap you know the 50 would be good for portraits headshots you could do full-body with some 85 millimeter is great for headshots close-up portraits 70 to 300 you could use that for so many different photography purposes I mean you can do that for sports photography you could also shoot a portrait with that as well being a zoom lens you have a lot of options and then there's a 24 to 70 lens again my favorite for getting you can do a wide angle and then you can zoom in real close get a portrait at the same time so very versatile for a lot of situations a lot of the lenses are the lenses are pretty light I mean this is a 50 1.8 on the rebel t6 and I mean this is perfect to travel with I think this would be a good setup if you're an influencer and you just want someone to take pictures of you so definitely look into something like this okay so now let's look into the applications for photo editing which is also very important and I'm going to be talking about applications on the computer because I feel like if you're doing professional photography you're gonna end up editing on your computer in the long run so it's important to have the right photo editing application for that now there is an option for a free application it's called the and I've never personally tried it I know that some other photographers have used this it is free and I don't see the harm in trying it if you're first starting out it's definitely a really good option another option is a photo editing program called affinity and I'm this read review I have not personally tried this it's $50 and that's actually pretty good for a photo editing software so that's another option the two programs that I currently use for my photo editing than it and then I've started with have been Lightroom and Photoshop now Lightroom retails for about 140 dollars alone so you can buy it on its own Photoshop retails for like 700 some dollars alone I believe that's what it said on the internet so if it's wrong the internet you can pay $10 a month and have them both together which is what I currently do I have Creative Cloud so I use Lightroom and Photoshop together it's added my pictures but realistically if you're starting out in photography I would probably recommend Lightroom and the reason why I recommend Lightroom is it's a lot easier to use not a lot of people are going to need the tools and Photoshop but I'm going to say that I would recommend Photoshop in the long run because I feel like photographers should know how to use that for their photo editing for instance if you're going to be doing Beauty photography I mean knowing how to skin retouch is very important and you can't really do that properly in Lightroom I mean there are options for retouching in Lightroom but I never retouch in Lightroom I only retouch in Photoshop but if you're a beginner photographer and you've never used these programs in your life and you're debating Photoshop Lightroom do Lightroom because Photoshop is very intimidating and overwhelming I don't want to try to scare you guys but I've been using this since I was in diapers it's not something that I would be comfortable recommending to a complete beginner Lightroom is preset base so you know you're basically using a bunch of presets and you're adjusting them for each photo and I think that's a good foundation to start to learn things like white balance you know temperature camera calibration shadows highlights all of that stuff Lightroom is great for batch processing things so if you're what you're trying to do wedding photography I think be perfect because you can apply presets and colors to more than one photo at once which is great whereas Photoshop it's not really that it's strong suit Photoshop is better in my opinion for single photos so if you're like concentrating on editing one picture at a time maybe you have like a smaller number of photos like five or six Photoshop would be way better for if you're editing a smaller number of pictures whereas again if you're batch processing fifty pictures that you took on vacation Lightroom would probably be the way to go for that lastly let's talk about the accessories for your camera equipment what extra stuff can you buy on top of the lenses and the cameras so definitely a photography reflector is something I would recommend you can buy this online for ten to twenty dollars maybe a little bit more I would recommend the reflectors that have silver gold white and black sides that are collapsible and interchangeable you can just like zip it up and then switch them out to change the colors that's something that I bought when I first started out and I found that it really helped me so that's something I recommend to you guys a memory card holder is very helpful to keep your memory cards in check I guess just keep them stored in one spot you don't want them to get dirty you don't want because that can cause corruption you want to keep them organized so that's definitely something to invest in especially if you have more than one card another thing is a prism crystal so basically an equilateral Prizm and this can cost fifteen to twenty dollars online I bought mine off of ebay I think it creates some amazing effects the equilateral Prizm is something that I was so excited to use when I bought it and found out about it so I definitely recommend that to you guys it's really fun to use you can come up with some cool effects when you're taking your photos just by putting it in front of your lens a little bit of advice don't go overboard you guys don't go on a shopping spree and spend five six thousand dollars on Photography equipment and one go you're going to get very overwhelmed you're gonna be intimidating because you have all this equipment you just spend thousands of dollars on that you don't really fully know how to use number three you're just gonna feel a lot of pressure because you just spent so much money and you're gonna kind of just force yourself to use it because you want to get your money's worth and you don't want to be in that situation you don't want to make a commitment that big right off the bat you want to start out small spend a couple hundred dollars on a couple things see how you like it and go from there start off small don't overwhelm yourself because we as humans we could overwhelmed very easily so I hope that these recommendations were helpful to you guys if you have other recommendations that you would like to leave in the comments feel free I'm sure people would appreciate it I would also encourage you guys to look up example photos from each lens so you guys can get an idea of what this lens will do when you put it on your camera body and you go out and take a picture so that's kind of what I did when I first started I would look up a lens like 24 to 70 millimeter in example photos so definitely would recommend you guys do that before spending money on a lens I want to thank you guys so much for watching and please remember that this is not an overnight process you're not gonna be a good photographer just because you know you bought all the right equipment it's gonna take time and practice and a lot of experimenting to become a better photographer so don't feel discouraged so I hope that my recommendations were helpful for you guys and I want to thank you guys so much for watching and good luck to you guys out there bye

Channel: Jessica Kobeissi

Views: 934,975

Rating: 4.956646 out of 5

Keywords: portrait tutorial, portrait editing, skin retouching, portrait retouching, professional skin retouching, professional photography tutorial, photoshop tutorial, photoshop editing tutorial, outdoor photography tutorial, beginner photography, photography tricks, photography tips, photography techniques, photography retouching tutorial, beginner photographers, best camera

Id: E3R11hzFJEg

Length: 17min 0sec (1020 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2019