Fueled by my ADHD, these are the 4 most expensive camera gear acquisition syndrome mistakes I've ever made!

Being an adult with adult money and previously undiagnosed ADHD sometimes means that impulsivity wins over logic when it comes to buying camera gear.

There are all sorts of outcomes – sometimes great and sometimes terrible. I’ve had some great buys and some awful ones. Let’s be clear, some of these things are great products, but my impulse to buy them just never panned out well.

Laowa 15mm Macro Shift lens

I bought this as a Canon fit lens to use with my Viltrox Speedbooster to get wide shots with good verticals in tight spaces. I even bought it at The Photography & Video Show from the stand-that’s how excited I was about it.

When I got home and started to use it on personal test projects, I discovered the two major failings that have left this lens in the press for years. First, it was very soft. Yes, you can post-process to make it better, but a better lens is the better solution.

The second issue is the shift control drops with gravity. Other lenses have a locking screw. This one did not. Often, I’d have the shot set up and then mid-shot on a longer exposure, the lens would slide down.

I haven’t given up on Laowa though. I have a dedicated Fujifilm X-fit Laowa 12-24mm f/5.6 Shift lens that just arrived and I’m excited to try it out.

7” External Monitor

In the times when stills cameras exploded onto the film-making scene, one bugbear was the tiny screen. It was simply too small for previewing, especially for gauging focus. I got a 7” SourcingBay external camera monitor online.

It had great reviews. For connections, it required full sized HDMI or sVGA. For power it had a mains 12v socket. To make it portable, I added a mounting plate for Sony NP-F550/750 video batteries. These are the ubiquitous power source in the video world. Given that a lot of panel lights used them, it was a no-brainer. Adding a micro to full HDMI and a cold-shoe adaptor meant I had a perfect large-scale preview. Or did I?

No matter what I did, the source was always slightly cropped in. This didn’t bother me ultimately. So why is it sitting in a press? Well, for the video work I’m doing, it was far easier to use a phone. For my tutorials, I use an old Fuji X-T2, which I can preview on my computer monitor. I simply just didn’t need it.

NEEWER Dimmable Bi-color LED Panel

Additional light is great for video, but it’s also very useful for still life and product photos. This light looked like it would be perfect. Tungsten and daylight balance options, and everywhere in between. Dimmable levels, working on two of the Sony batteries or on mains with the included power supply. The yoke bracket was built in and the light could tilt from a central axis. A diffuser panel could slide in to soften the 480 LEDs in this beast. It even had its own branded carry case. Right now with discounts, it’s under €100. Honestly, what could be better?

Well, for me, it turned out that two smaller LED panels, the Viltrox L116T ($80 the pair on Amazon), worked out far better. I use them day in, day out for video tutorials, as well as for on desk stills.

The Neewer is still a great product, but the size and weight ruled it out of general use for me. If you’re doing interviews, three of these would be a great 3-point lighting setup.

Fujifilm X-H2S

If you thought that I’m a Fuji fanboi through and through, this one will surprise you. I heard about this camera before release and I was beyond impressed with all the features I was seeing in a pre-production model. The Fujifilm X-H2S felt great in hand. The top display shows settings. You get an incredible 40 frames per second continuous JPEG shooting. You get the faster focus. Even things like Frame.io compatibility allowing remote client viewing appealed to me. So I got one.

I loved using the camera, but it was a learning curve coming from an X-T4. Then the X-T5 came out and I got it. Some of my professional work involves broadcast, where I’m using two or even three cameras. In this situation, switching mindset from the X-T5 to X-H2S in high-stakes performance capture shifted me to using the X-T5 and the X-T4. This left the X-H2S in the cold and I eventually sold it to a friend who wanted to do more video work.

There was no issue with the camera itself, just how I worked with it. Furthermore, for certain location work, I use a very old and obsolete Eye-Fi card to wirelessly transmit the JPG from my camera. The JPGs were transmitted to an iPad with Shuttersnitch so the clients could see the shots in real time. I save Raw files to Slot 1 and Jpeg images to Slot 2. The Eye-Fi is an SD card, so that was out for the X-H2S (which has one CFexpress slot and one SD card slot).