STOP wasting money... Good and bad investments for landscape photographers

As somebody that admittedly suffers from a severe case of gear acquisition syndrome, I have blown money in fantastic ways with photography and in this video I want to cover some of the areas where I've spent my money wisely and it's been a great purchase, and other areas where it was just a complete waste of money and hopefully we can get you guys to avoid making the same poor investments that I have. So let's jump into it. So thing number one that I really wish that I wouldn't have spent money on, and this is more you know early photography Nick, when in my first year or two of photography like many people I picked up Lightroom presets. At the time I thought I was making this great investment but all I was actually doing is giving myself a post-processing crutch. It is a crutch that totally held me back and looking back at it now I see Lightroom presets as nothing more than a scam. They're not a scam. If you have zero interest in learning and getting better at at post-processing Lightroom presets can be useful or if you're going to reverse engineer you know what gives that preset its look that can be a useful kind of research thing but more often than not they're just a complete waste of money and they're kind of preying on the newer photographer. Everybody sells presets and they sell it because they're really easy to create and there's a lot of people out there that don't know how to post-process. So rather than spending that money on a Lightroom preset spend that time and energy on just getting better at post-processing. You will become better for it and you can do it for free right here on YouTube. So rather than spending time trying to save time with Lightroom presets spend it on getting better at post-processing. So the next thing is actually one of the best investments I've ever made it is L brackets. L brackets are one of the most useful accessories you could ever get as a landscape photographer especially if you're using a ball head that is Arca Swiss compatible. Arca Swiss compatible is just this style of clamp and most L brackets are Arca Swiss compatible. This is an expensive L bracket from Really Right Stuff but you really don't have to get a more expensive brand when it comes to L brackets. The one thing you want to make sure of though is that you're getting one that is specially molded or fit for your particular camera. All an L bracket is it's this bracket that makes it very easy to quickly mount your camera in vertical orientation which makes panoramas way easier, makes vertical compositions way easier and it also protects your camera from hard drops and falls on this side. L brackets are incredibly useful and a lot of times you can get the more affordable ones for like 30 or 40 bucks just make sure that you get one that is molded for your particular model of camera. So something else that I have wasted a lot of money on and I know that lots of other people have as well let's talk filters. Graduated filters are what I call a lot of people use them for dealing with high dynamic range scenes, really bright skies, dark foregrounds. You can slide this in front of your camera in front of your lens and it's going to darken that sky but if you have anything other than a flat horizon line you're going to have artifacts. You're either going to have bright areas in the sky where this gradation hasn't darkened enough or you're going to have dark mountaintops or dark treetops. They create a lot of problems and you cannot undo them. So what I highly recommend to everybody is that you exposure blend. You get the full dynamic range of the scene through either two or three photos, dark one for the sky, bright one for the foreground and then you blend them in either Photoshop or Lightroom. That is free. These are not. These are often very very expensive and even if you get a good brand it's a destructive workflow. It's something you can't undo. It saves you a lot of money and a lot of weight. I do use filters but when I use filters I use just screw on circular filters and something else that you can do to save money is you buy filters with your largest filter thread size. So in my case it'd be 82 millimeters for my 16-35 and then you can buy either step up or step down rings that will adapt that to my other lenses. So for example I have an 82 to 77 millimeter step up thread so I can buy three filters and it'll work for all my lenses. I'll just adapt them to the smaller filter size. I personally use breakthrough photography filters. I find that oh man that is a dirty filter. I find that they're an incredible filter and they're a lot more affordable than some of the other filters out there. But I always use just circular filters. So another area of photography that I've spent just tons of money and honestly it's not a huge a total waste of money but I certainly have not gotten my money's worth in that area and this pains me to say it but drones. So I have two drones. I have the Mavic Air and the Phantom 4 Pro. This is my Phantom 4 Pro and I just don't use them nearly as much as I thought that I would. First of all when you are getting into drone photography it seems like everywhere that's cool and you'd like to fly your drone you can't do it anymore. Most state parks, national parks you can't fly drones. It's really difficult to even find a cool place to fly a drone and then when you do fly a drone if there's anybody there they're always super annoyed by it. I've never been in a situation where people are like oh you've got a drone up that's cool. They're always like oh I hate drones. Everybody hates drones. So it makes you really self-conscious to even fly them. So I hardly ever take my Phantom 4 Pro out anymore. I thought that I would use it a lot but I just don't. I do use my Mavic Air sometimes and I use that mostly just for some vlogging type material but I seldom fly that anymore. I just don't get my money's worth and for that reason I'm going to be selling this guy. Drones are just one of those things that you think that you'll use more or at least in my case you think you'll use it more than you do and for that reason drones have to go on the wasted money side of things. So how about a cheap one? How about something that's affordable? I absolutely love these things. These are scientific cleaning wipes from Kimtech. They're made for cleaning scientific instruments but what they're really good at is absorbing moisture off of the front element of your lens. These are lint free so you can easily use them on your front element. Just be careful not to you know rub it really hard. But what's cool about these over a lens cloth is that let's say you're shooting around water you know like a waterfall or in a stream you get little splashes of water droplets on your front element. These will just absorb that water right up. A lot of times a lens cloth it kind of pushes that water around but these will absorb it really fast and you can get a box like this for like six bucks. I get them off at Amazon. I'll put a link in the description below. I love these things. Anytime I'm shooting seascapes or around water I always make sure that I have a couple of these in my pocket and they're just like little tissue things. Let me grab one. They're just like these little tissue things. Throw a couple of these in your pocket. When you get a little water on your front element you go and it just sucks it right up. So the final thing that I have for you guys is an area where I feel like people try to save money but they end up spending more money later on down the road. And the saying is you buy nice or you buy twice. And when it comes to things like ball heads oftentimes they just don't hold up to the wear and tear of you know the landscape photographer unless you get a decent one. So this is a Really Right Stuff BH55. I've had it for three years now something like that and it's held up incredibly well. This is an expensive ball head. It comes in at that much and you know it's not a cheap ball head by any means but it is an incredibly nice one. And if you think about how often you are using a ball head when you're doing landscape photography your camera's almost always on a tripod and the thing that you use the most is that ball head. If you are having a bad experience with your ball head either it's not stable or the knobs are fiddly or something is not right with it doesn't get tight enough it makes for a annoying a miserable experience. And then you end up replacing it with a slightly more expensive ball head. And what generally happens is you buy really cheap the first time you buy slightly more expensive the second time you buy slightly nicer the third time and then the fourth time you get a really expensive one. In that amount of money you could have got just one good one and it would have lasted you the whole time. So more so than the tripod legs I always encourage people to get a really nice ball head. And you don't always have to go for the most expensive you know Really Right Stuff is one of the most expensive brands out there. But you know companies like Colorado Tripod Company they have really affordable really high quality good ball heads. Enduro also makes a really great ball head. So there's more affordable brands out there. Just make sure that you're not trying to save money on the things that are designed to last you a really long time. Ball heads are something that you're constantly interacting with and you'll really appreciate it if you spend a little bit more you buy nice or you're going to buy twice. It's just how it goes. All right guys just a quick little video for you guys today. Hopefully this will save you guys from spending some of the obscene amounts of money on gear that we all do. There are some areas where you can save money other areas where it's worth it to invest in good stuff. Take it easy guys and we'll see you in the next video.