Local amateur photographer John Bellamy has spent the past few months shooting with his phone. He reasoned that it was silly to buy a dedicated camera because he had a camera built into his phone, but after playing with a Nikon D800E at B&H Photo Video in New York City, Bellamy realized that a DSLR offered far more flexibility, quality and control than his iPhone 3GS.

“All of my photographs were so much sharper,” Bellamy told us over the phone. “I had no idea that these cameras could do so much more than my phone.” Bellamy spent the first few weeks after his purchase of a refurbished Canon XSi with the camera permanently raised to his eye.

“What if I miss something?” he reasoned. Bellamy had one of his friends construct a head mount, so that he wouldn’t wear out his arm. He went one step further by setting up a wireless trigger so that he wouldn’t have to raise his arm at all. His Instagram bio reads, “I’m a picture-taking machine.”

Three months passed before Bellamy realized that he could change the lens on his camera.

“I always wondered what that little button was next to the lens,” he told us over the phone. Bellamy thought he broke his camera when he twisted the lens off for the first time. A quick search online clued him into the very nature of interchangeable lens cameras, and he made a beeline for eBay where he bid obsessively on lenses for his XSi.

He eventually blew his savings on gear, and is currently living on a street corner where he set up a ramshackle portrait studio. “Will trade portraits and cat photos for food & cash,” his sign reads.

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