When I upgraded my Canon 20D to my new Canon 7D, I never anticipated the expensive repercussions of that decision.  I’d saved and waited for the 7D with much excitement and anticipation.  I did my research, compared the 7D with the 50D, trying to figure out if the extra financial expense was worth it.  Asking myself, “Is the standard of my work worth this expense?”  If it wasn’t, would I progress at a fast enough rate that my work would measure up to the camera’s capabilities, and would my work pay for the camera within a year of purchasing it?  After months of deliberation, research, self doubt and saving my pennies, I decided that I would buy the 7D.

At no point in all this research did it dawn on me to research the knock on effect of this purchase.  I never stopped to consider that the batteries, battery grip and remote release cable for the 20D are not compatible with the 7D.  I was terribly excited that the 7D is a fantastic 18mp camera.  It never once dawned on me that this huge jump from an 8mp to an 18mp camera would require extra memory.  Suddenly I needed to purchase additional CF (compact flash) cards.  A 1G card took 96 RAW + jpg photographs when I used my 20D. When using the 7D I can only take 27 RAW + jpg photographs on a 1G card.  Not only was camera memory a problem, but now I needed more memory on my pc as well.  An additional external hard drive was now necessary.

In my determination to make all this expense worth it I have been taking many more photos to hone my skills as a photographer as well as my editing skills.  In this process I have discovered that I spend far too much time editing photographs and Photoshop CS3 is an amazing program and I love, but it is also laborious.  In addition to this, CS3 cannot read the RAW files from the 7D, and I need to convert them to dng files before I can edit them, which adds to editing time.  Then I discovered Lightroom 3.  This incredible program dramatically speeds up the editing process and it can read the 7D CR2 files.  But of course the speed comes only once you have mastered the program.  I’ve downloaded the Beta version, which is free until April, when they plan to release Lightroom 3.

So let’s add it all up:

2 x Additional batteries (generic) @ R700.00 each

2 x 16G CF cards @ R1500.00 each

2 x 32G CF cards @ R2700.00 each

1 x Terabyte external hard drive @ R2000.00

1 x Lightroom @ approximately R3000.00 (price will be given when released)

1 x Quote to upgrade pc to cope with extra work required & speed it up R12 000.00

That will give you a total of R26 800.00

Additional “hidden costs”:

Time spent learning and practicing to perfect techniques and learn programs.

The cost of courses attended to learn new skills and programs

The cost of babysitters so that I can attend these courses

Insurance on all the equipment

Batteries for the flash (for an average wedding you’ll use 4 x sets of 4 AA batteries) at a cost of around R95.00 per set of 4.

So next time a photographer gives you a quote for your portrait session, your child’s birthday party or your wedding and you think it is expensive, perhaps it’s not as unreasonable as you thought it was.