Cheap Photography Setup for a Social Media Marketer — Sony Alpha 3000
What a Social Media Marketer is supposed to do is post other post and track other people’s content.
What most people expect Social Media Marketers to do is create content, and then post and track it.
I’ll explain elsewhere how to have that conversation, and how to set up accurate expectations.
Anyways. You want a cheap camera setup.
I recommend the Sony Alpha 3000.
This isn’t a comprehensive spec review.
This is a “you should buy this if you don’t want to think about the complex info that goes into buying a camera.”
This is also a “once you have this camera, here are the first 10 things you’ll need to know about it.”
The Pros
About the best quality images you can get for under $500* (seriously)
The software/functionality is pretty decent
It takes Sony E-mount lenses which are “affordable”
The Cons
The LCD screen is meh, and the viewfinder is bad
It’s menu works, but its a bit confusing
It’s lens adapter is about $1–300
Low light capability is not amazing out of the box
What does this mean?
It has an AMOS-C sensor, which is the largest sensor you can get for the price. The next level up in quality starts at around $600–1000. This basically means the images won’t blow up to the size of a projector screen well, and you can’t zoom in on them more than about 200–300% before you start to notice issues, but… if you frame your images well, you can shoot images and video that will work perfectly well for the web. Are you going to film a Hollywood movie on it? No. Can you successfully run a web or social campaign on it? Yes.
The camera does what you would expect a camera to do: adjust those fidgety settings like ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed, White Balance, Auto Focus, Manual Focus, etc. Any feature that you could reasonably expect a modern camera to do, it does. You won’t find something really necessary missing. That said, the menu is not layed out well, and there is no touch screen for you to bounce around really quickly, or tap which part of the image you want the auto-focus to pick-up on. It’s annoying, but you can totally work around it.
E-mount lenses are not all break the bank lenses. Some of them definitely are. Check out the range of prices. They range from about $40–$900. You’ll need the kit lens. You’ll eventually want a telephoto lens, a macro lens, and a low light lens. You can have less or more, but that range will allow you to get photos super close, photos far away, photos in bad lighting, and regular old photos (hint hint, regular photos are the most important.)
If you have other lenses or are buying cheaper lenses that don’t fit on the E-mount, keep in mind that you’ll need an adapter. Some adapters are cheaper, some are expensive. The LA-EA1/LA-EA2 adapter, which allows you to put A-mount lenses onto your Sony A3000, runs for about $300, or cheaper if used. Some older lenses require this mount. So it’s important to know what adapter you will need before you decide to go the “cheaper” route of using old lenses.
The reason why there is a star next to “under $500” is because of lenses. This is true for any camera. You can start out with this camera for under $500. If you want to start getting fancy with this, or any camera. You will pay more for lenses. You can also start buying other gear like dollys, tripods, professional lighting, etc.
Here’s the most important con: the LCD and viewfinder suck. This is something that is pretty easy to work around, however if you don’t take the half-hour to learn how, you will take bad photos on this camera forever.
Taking decent photos on the Sony A3000
Let’s start with some photography basics and the two easiest ways to get over taking bad photos with this camera. The two easiest ways to take bad pictures are taking out of focus photos, and taking bad photos in low light.
Out of focus photos let you assume you are taking good photos, only to load them up on the computer and see that they just look, well, bad. In fact it looks like you took them on a cheap camera. You didn’t, though. The blurryness is coming from the fact that the camera didn’t autofocus properly. However, you couldn’t tell because the LCD and viewfinder on this camera are too small to see that level of detail.
The way you deal with out of focus photos are by using the DMF setting, the focus peaking tool, and the manual focus assist (MF Assist) tool. These are menu options that you turn on in the camera. DMF must be turned on first in order to have access to the others.
To turn on DMF, go to Menu > Camera >AF/MF Select and choose DMF.
Once you’ve done that, go to Menu > Setup > Peaking Level. There are a few peaking levels. What you choose depends on your style.
Finally go to Menu > Setup > MF Assist and make sure its on.
DMF is a combination of manual and auto focus. It’s your best friend. You hold down the shutter button halfway and the camera will autofocus. Once you’ve done that, you can use the focus wheel on your lens to fine-tune the focus, however, if you’ve been reading this article, you should know by now that the LCD sucks and the viewfinder sucks, and you’d have no idea what you’re really fine tuning.
Focus peaking shows a little halo around the parts of the image that are in focus. Be warned. This feature is not perfect. Some people have shown that it doesn’t actually show what is in focus on the image, but instead shows what is in focus on the LCD. Those are two different things. The LCD is 5-10x smaller than the actual picture you are taking, so if your camera thinks that it’s in focus on the LCD, it’s making a huge estimation. Focus peaking, however, is a really great tool and helps you get just that much closer.
MF Assist is the real game-changer. If you hold down the shutter button halfway for the time you’ve specified in the menu, the camera will temporarily zoom in on the image you are taking to show you the detail of what is and isn’t in focus. Then you can adjust the focus ring on your lens, to fine tune what you see in that zoomed image.
The way it should work is that you point the camera directly at the thing you want to photograph and hold the button down halfway. The camera autofocuses, shows focus peaking lines, and then zooms in on the image to allow you to fine tune the focus (still showing focus peaking lines.) You let go of the shutter button, frame your shot again (without refocusing,) and snap the picture. Congrats, you are now an amateur photographer!
Low lighting means there is not enough light and the camera is having trouble getting a good image out of it. You can get excessive digital noise if you bump the ISO up too much to compensate and low lighting in general can cause some noise on its own (I think…)
To fix this, you will need some combination of: more light, higher ISO, wider aperture, longer shutter speed. The A3000 has decent automated functions for most of these settings, however they can only do so much. What you’re really going to need to get good quality images in low light is probably a low-light lens and a better understanding of the camera. I’m going to be honest and tell you that I’m not 100% of the way there yet on understanding low light lenses or the camera’s low light functions.
What I recommend is just more light or a camera flash. If I can’t get a good image in low light, I shine lights on the subject. I would recommend doing some research on proper lighting, cheap lighting effects, post-processing, and low lighting photography.
Learning focus should take about an hour or so. Learning lighting is a much longer pursuit and is what distinguishes expert photographers from regular ones.
Buying the Sony A3000 on Ebay.
You can buy this in many places. You can buy the body only, or with a telephoto lens, or with the kit lens, or with some knockoff lens.
Some reputable people have told me never to buy a body off of Ebay because you can never be sure if it was dropped, and therefore permanently damaged internally. However, I did it anyways and I’m fine. Chalk one up for survivorship bias.
I recommend buying the A3000 with the kit lens or with a similar Sony NEX 18–55 (or 18–50) lens. It’s really hard to guarantee that the A3000 will come with them on Ebay, however it’s really nice to have a version of the standard kit lens that you know will work automatically with the A3000. The kit lens is electrically driven which means that it has to interface properly with the camera body to do all of the magic auto/manual focusing stuff that it does. I could be wrong here, but I don’t want to pretend like I know more than I do. At least buying the camera with a standard lens that you know will work allows you to start doing stuff with it right out of the box.
If you don’t buy it with a kit lens, make sure that you have a reliable place to buy a Sony brand lens that will work with the A3000.
If you want to buy non-standard lenses, you should really do your research on how they work and what kind of adapter you will need. Some of them are motor driven. The standard adapters for the A3000 camera are the EA-LA1 and EA-LA2. They both allow you to connect A-mount lenses to the camera. I honestly don’t know which adapter is really better per-se, but I do know that the EA-LA2 is motor driven, which allows you to hook up lenses that require a motor to drive their auto-whatever features. That said, you can still use most of those features manually if you’re game. Just, do your research to know what you’re in for. I highly recommend going to a camera shop to look at some of this stuff in person just to at least get an understanding of what you’re doing.
Other things you should buy
A lens hood if it doesn’t already come with the lens you bought. Read the article. They make your pictures better.
A tripod, preferably with a level if you can afford it. This will allow you to take video and images that are more premeditated and less shaky.
A camera bag. This allows you to safely store your camera. If you put your fancy new camera in a regular backpack, its just going to bang around with all the other stuff in there.
Extra batteries. If you’re shooting video you will 100% need them. Stills you will 50% need them.
Lens caps for any lenses that don’t have them. Super important. Consider that a scratched lens can cost $100+ to fix. A lens cap is like $10.
Final Notes
Oh yeah, did I mention, this camera is technically a point and shoot camera, not a true DSLR? People online will complain about that. It’s not going to be as cool as the B&W, fully-manual Minolta camera you used in photography 101, but it takes good photos.
Want to know more? Read the user manual to find the features you need in the menu, and look at Youtube for some great tutorials on how to actually take pictures.
