Upgrades people, upgrades.

The sun is setting as we pull over my friend's Volkswagen Golf to the side of the road. The car, an offwhite, is covered in a pink hue. I take out my camera bag, and instead of my trusty EOS R, which I've shot everything on for 6 years, I pull out a Sony FX3.

It's a weird feeling. I know my R like the back of my hand. Each button has been worn down by my fingers as I hone my craft. Each scratch hints at a story that I have.

It has been my way of filming nine different documentary episodes, and it has helped me become a more fully realized version of a photographer.

It's been signed by Akira Nakai and Alex Martini, two people who, along with a certain New York YouTuber, have shaped my ideas for what I want my videos to evoke in people.

but a change was needed.

I fumble around the buttons on the FX3's menu, trying to figure out how to get the camera to focus faster. I settle to turning into manual focus mode, and with focus peaking on, I can see where I need to adjust. But it's slow. Much slower than my R. I'm wondering if I made the right decision.

Did I need to spend five thousand dollars to get much of the same image that I get out of my old camera?

As content creators, we've all heard it before. Each new piece of gear threatens to make you that much better of a photographer, to give you that extra secret formula.

"This new piece of gear will completely change your workflow!"

I've always focused more on telling a story; the voice is always more important than the mic used to capture it. I was adamant about showing people that an older camera could hold up to travelling and daily abuse.

For most of the time I've had the camera, I have been the one holding the camera back, not the other way around.

I have to stick a knife in the battery door to switch to a fresh one. I've broken the hotshoe on a club floor in Fredericton and the shutter in the middle of a wedding. Bolts are rusted from when I shot trucks in the salt water in Nova Scotia. I have to push the ISO past its limit to shoot in nightclubs.

I put the card into my computer and started looking through all the photos. Even with the missed focus, I knew I had made the right call. The dynamic range is far better than the R, and I'm able to get more out of the sky.

However, the process is slow. I feel like I'm completely starting from scratch again. I can no longer explain the menu I'm looking at over the phone. I can barely get through it myself.

But it's an upward falling. I know that this camera is more capable than my R, and I'm excited to push it past its boundaries. But I'm more excited about what this means for me. I grew as much as I could with the R, but the FX3 allows me more space to grow.

Do I finally subscribe to the notion that gear makes you better? A definite no. However, gear does help you to get a final product more like the one you envision. and the FX3 gets me closer to what I want to make.

I want to make movies.