#these are the best quality pics I could get from the various vlogs I found

[thedeepseahotel]

More concept art displayed at the Deep Sea art exhibition!

[peachhplum]

WHAT'S THE BEST CAMERA FOR A BLOGGER, CONTENT CREATOR OR INFLUENCER?

Without fail one of the most frequently asked questions to me about being a content creator is 'what camera do you use?' or more specifically 'what camera should I get?' so here's the tell all about the first camera I got as a blogger and then what I upgraded to and why. FYI - I bought all of this stuff, no freebies. 

IF YOU'RE A COMPLETE NEWBIE

It goes without saying that if you're a complete newbie to blogging or content creation then you don't wanna invest all your money into equipment that you're not even sure how often you'll use or how to use properly yet. The cameras on new smartphones like the iPhone, google pixel, Huawei etc seem to be incredible quality and you really can get some great images from there with a little editing and tweaking in 'post' (that's what photography people call after you've taken the shot). Some of the images on my insta feed are still iPhone snaps. I just use Snapseed to deal with any imperfections and edit slightly. Snapseed is great for basic editing tools such as brightening, adding contrast, sharpness etc. You can also fix the 'temperature' of the images (if it's too yellow for instance). Then I use a stronger filtering app like colorstory to give it a filter or 'look'. Sometimes just a quick correction on Snapseed is enough - the overly filtered look is pretty circa 2015 and the modern look is clean, crisp and almost unfiltered.

Here are some shots that I took on my iPhone 8+

IF YOU'VE DONE THE WHOLE SMARTPHONE THING FOR A WHILE AND WANT A PROPER CAMERA NOW

I would suggest the Olympus Pen EPL-8.

It was made with bloggers in mind so looks great for starters but also packs punch inside a little camera that portable enough to take anywhere and not look completely obnoxious (no one wants to photograph their food with a giant whopper lens unless you really are giving no fucks, but in which case I think you're pretty cool tbh).

It's what they call a 'micro four thirds' camera which means it has a smaller cropped sensor. this may sound like gobbldeygook but all that means is it takes lower resolution photos. But that's fine for web and instagram. If you want much higher quality you may want to upgrade, more on that later... 

Anyway back to the EPL-8. Here's why it's great for your first camera. 

It's affordable (around the £400 mark for basic kit lens and camera body)

You can buy additional lenses to swap around (gets you that lovely soft blurred 'bokeh' background that everyone is so into though personally I'm kinda over it), these lenses are also affordable, starting from around £120 (secret - lenses are what start to make your pictures look way more pro!)

It's dinky!

It's easy to use - even off automatic 

It has wifi enabled so you can send pics straight to your phone

You can film on it too

The screen flips down for selfies and up / around for overhead shots (the screen flipping down can be V annoying if you want to Vlog though as it gets in the way of a tripod, just a heads up)

I thoroughly suggest at this point investing in a two day course to learn the basics of photography. It'll help you get off automatic mode and have so much more control over your images. You know like when you're in low light and it is blurring all the pics? There is a way to stop that. But you need to know how the shutter speed, ISO and aperture all work together. Once you get your head round it, it's actually very easy! I did a two day beginners course at the London Institute of Photography and it completely changed my photography for the better. The course is £195 and worth every penny!

Here are some images I shot on the EPL-8 with various lenses on my travels last year

and here is a video shot on the Olympus...

This was my exact olympus setup...

IF YOU'VE BEEN SHOOTING A WHILE AND WANT TO UPGRADE TO SOMETHING MORE PRO

This was the situation I found myself in recently. I'd been shooting with the Olympus for a while and started to reach the limits of what I could do creatively with it. I wanted to do a lot more flash photography and I had learnt about editing with Lightroom (thanks to LIoP's course that I've been doing) and so I wanted higher resolution images. I also wanted higher resolution video as I'm doing more filming and crisper, more pro images. After extensive research I went for the Fujifilm XT20. Its a lot more expensive (£849 with basic zoom kit lens) but sooo worth it. 

Here's why!

It's still quite small (though the lenses can add bulk)

It has higher resolution images than the Olympus

It shoots 4k video

It has a mic input line (something that really bugged me about shooting video on the Olympus as you had to rely on the ambient sound from the camera mic)

I liked how it looked and 'felt'

It has an viewfinder! The Olympus doesn't, it just uses the digital screen which is fine for a while but I wanted to really get inside the photographs and to me a viewfinder helps with this

The lenses were a lot more pro and gave much crisper images

It has a traditional hotshoe (this is where you connect a flash. The Olympus you could only use certain flashes and hotshoe connections)

The white balance is better (I found the Olympus struggled slightly with any yellow lighting situations)

I lost a the flippy screen from the Olympus (Fuji has one but it's not quite as good) but overall the pros far outweigh the cons (well, the one con). 

Here are some photos that I've taken on the Fujifilm XT20 with an 18-135 zoom lens

and here's a video I've shot on it (the sound isn't great as I didn't have a plug in mic at this point)

This is the exact equipment I use now...

Hopefully I'll get some more lenses for this camera soon too. 

So there you have it, that's my camera setup, hope it helps you out! Feel free to comment with any questions or hit me up on insta and I'll share anything I know!

S x

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