Loctor Mayat’s Autopsy

Oo… today leh.. Cikgu going to talk about something else laa..

You see, these photography stuff… while it may be fun… it is not actually cheap. When one is going into this hobby initially, he or she must be prepared to spend a substantial amount of money in order to get a basic start up kit for him or her to start shooting photos.

Well.. today Cikgu Mayat is going to give a few pointers, based on personal experiences, as well as from what I’ve observed over the years on how people finance their equipment lah….

(1) Never use ‘Evil Money’ to buy

Okay, what did I mean by Evil Money leh? Maybe this photo will go straight to the point:

Woahahha~!

I know that almost of all you, are buying your camera stuff using credit cards. Well… to me, there is nothing wrong with buying using credit cards. In fact, sometimes when the items are thousands and thousands of Ringgit, it is EXTREMELY dangerous to carry that amount of cash to walk into a store.

So, credit card is useful only if you look at it from this point of view.

Bear in mind, most shops will charge an additional of 2-3% on the total price if you use credit card to pay. There is nothing much you can do about it but if you are good friends with the boss, you might get charged lesser. WOahahhaha

Now…. IF you use the credit card to pay for your precious DSLR and it’s accessories…. BUT you only pay the minimum amount every month the credit card statement comes… then you’re nothing but a fool.

This kind of purchase, is what I call it buying with ‘Evil Money‘. Spending your future income is an idiotic way of obtaining your material desires. It is sad to say that quite a lot of people go into this kind of credit card debt so easily, after a few years, they are easily in RM20-30k of debts. What for laaa…?

Never spend your future income!!

(2) You DON’T NEED to have everything

When you are picking up photography, you need to differentiate between what you NEED and what you WANT. A lot of people cannot tell which are the things they need and things they want.

For Cikgu, the things you definitely NEED are:

- A camera (DUH~!)

- A good wide angle lens (e.g. Kit Lens)

- An adequate support system a.k.a Tripod

- A drybox , and

- A flash unit (if you can afford it)

To me, that is all that you need for producing excellent images for many many years. Of course, now with digital photography you will need to do some simple (or extremely heavy) post processing so you’ll need a computer powerful enough to run PhotoShop or whatever software you want to.

I really do not understand those guys who buy multiple lenses which more or less do the same thing. I can understand the concept behind having multiple flashes if the photographer is into multiple flash lighting techniques though.

The worst are those who want to buy everything but once they get their hands on it, they never use it.

There are photographers, and there are people who like to talk about photography. Which group do you belong to?

Every time someone asks me whether they should get this lens or that flash or that body bla bla bla…. I will always ask the same question.. “Do you need it?”

For some, they can answer themselves and admit that they just want to buy it for shiok shiok saje..

well.. if you have money and don’t know what to do with it….. by all means go ahead. But if you’re just an average salary earner with bills to pay and debts to clear, then…..

WOAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

(3) Buy ORI (if you can)

Okay.. this one.. not all may agree with me but who cares? LOL

If you have a Nikon DSLR… please la… go buy Nikon lenses and stick with it

If you have a Canon… then go get a Canon lens…

I have nothing against 3rd party lenses like Tamron, Sigma, Tokina, Etc…. I do admit some of them produce very good results. My point here is that, since you are spending your hard earned money on something that costs several thousands… why not just go ahead and get the best there is? The primary reason people go for 3rd party is because they’re cheap… that’s all. Not the F/2.8 capability or what Vibration Reduction or whatever mumbo jumbo… no… that is just to cheat yourself and make you happy for a few weeks after your purchase.

Personally, I have bought and used several 3rd party lenses. Today, I have already sold off each and every one of them. None of them can give me consistent results. Some of them couldn’t even focus properly when I needed it to. The worst is, after a couple of years, the coating of the 3rd party lens slowly disappear!!

Now, with my original Nikon lenses, I never faced such issues.

(4) You don’t “invest” in photography unless you make money out of it

Some people very smart. To justify their expensive photography purchase to their wives/mother… they said they are “investing” into the equipment.

These people ah… don’t know whether they understand the term “invest” or not….

Investing by definition means putting in your money with the intention of making a return out from it.

So… if you are “investing” your money in your expensive photography gear, you must have some plan of getting back some Return on Investment (ROI). How to do that leh? Easy nia…. 99.999% newbies will say they will shoot wedding photos for people.

Some will have a plan of setting up a studio…. while some target commercial companies to sell their images.

Those are very good.. as long as you stick to your plan… and make a return as soon as possible.

NOW…

A LOT.. and i say … A LOT of people who go and shoot weddings… are actually quite…

How come?

Say for example a certain Mr Lambardo who just spent roughly RM4,000 on a medium range DSLR with a wide angle zoom kit lens plus a flash. He said he will go shoot wedding to make money…

One fine day, thanks to some recommendations from some aunties or what nots… Mr Lambardo was asked to shoot the wedding ceremony of some cousin aunty sister’s friend’s uncle’s mechanic son’s tuition teacher. However, because he’s new and inexperienced, he only charges RM200 for his services.

SO… if you do some simple calculation..

If Mr Lambardo charges RM200 *ONLY*  each and every time his ’services’ are needed, he will only Break Even after…

4,000  / 200 = 20 times

That… does not even include his petrol, toll, lodging, food incurred during the photo shoot. In addition, he might even need to apply annual leave from work or sacrifice his weekends just to achieve that.

Now.. the biggest mistake a newbie would do is… after getting .. say… 2 jobs worth Rm200… they feel like they’re damn pro already. So… the “pro” label must be accompanied by better equipment. So off goes the RM400 into upgrading to a better lens or flash or camera body. This goes on and on and after a few years, they would’ve already spent tens of thousands on equipments alone.. but still charging less than RM1k for their services.

Where’s the investment????

It is a different story.. if you have the mindset of buying the equipment.. as a hobby. This is actually what I’m doing now… I don’t care about how much I can earn from the hobby… I only care about getting nice images for myself and my family which I can treasure for many years to come. If someone needs my services, even if I shoot for free also i won’t feel a thing because in my head , making money out from the hobby never crossed my mind.

The only caveat is… I need to know you pretty well to be able to shoot for FREE for you. LOL… else… you go find those RM200 photographers la.. they are “Investors”

(5) Save up

This has got to be the most basic advice any parent can give.

If you want something so badly… even though it’s rather a useless thing…

as long as you like it.. and you think you will enjoy it a lot… who cares what other people say?? Just buy it!

These photography stuff are not cheap… in fact, some of them are so expensive costing tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousand. If you want them so badly.. .then save up for it!

I find it very appalling that an average salaried worker cannot even put aside one or two hundred a month aside for savings. What comes in.. goes out immediately. How stupid is that.

As discussed about in (1), never use credit card to buy then slowly pay off… even though it has the 0% installment facility. It sucks to pay off something for several months. I’ve been there, I know the feeling.

If the camera you want to buy costs Rm3,000… then put aside RM200 every month.. by 1.5 years… you already have the money to buy it already. Hey, you do get a bonus at the end of the year… no? You might get the buy the equipment sooner than you think

The key word is…. DISCIPLINE

Some tried but only manage to save the money for 2 months.

Some talk very pandai but couldn’t even save for the 1 month.

Talk a lot but no action… you only have yourself to blame for getting into deeper and deeper debt.

Okay laa… Enough talk already. I manage to type so long because I am on annual leave enjoying my time off and UltraBen is with the babysitter now. Woahahha… time for Cikgu to go sleep liao…

See ya!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 2:18 am and is filed under General Stuff, Kelas Kamera LM, Photography, finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.