Wednesday, September 17, 2025
By Mike Moats Photography
To many photographers think that if they buy a better camera they will make better images. They spend most of their time on tech sites where they give you the updates on the latest greatest equipment offered.
If I post here on this blog about some new Tamron lens or some equipment important to what we do as macro photographers, I get tons of hits on those posts. If I post something about composition, or subject matter, I get far fewer hits on those posts. People have it backwards.
My most successful image I ever shot was of a green fern on a black burned tree trunk (below) and that image won more awards, published in photo mags more times than any other of my images, the full rights to the image was bought by Hewlett Packard for all advertising, and made more money than any image I ever produced, and it was shot in 2004, with a Fuji S2, 6 megapixel camera with an old macro lens from my film camera. That system was many generations ago in the digital world and it produced my most successful image.
That image did well because it was a great subject and composed well. It had nothing to do with the camera. Because if it was about the equipment, then I should be producing more successful images with my more advanced system I use today.
My last three camera bodies (Nikon D7000, Nikon D7500, Fuji X-T30 mirrorless) sold for under $1,000, so you don't need and expensive camera body to produce beautiful macro images. Only reason I upgraded from my Nikon D7000 of 8 years, to the Nikon D7500 was because I wanted a articulating LCD, and not because my D7000 wasn't producing great images. If you can afford more expensive camera bodies, there is nothing wrong with that, but it's not required to make great macro images.
Once you've acquired a good camera body and macro lens, stop wasting time on the tech sites, and spend your time learning about what makes an image successful.
Having the tools to produce quality images, but not knowing the difference between good and bad subject matter, and how to compose a subject properly, is going to keep you producing poor images.
If you are one of those photographers that spends all your time on tech sites, change your direction.