Day 2 of Project.30 and we’re already at the question every creative circles back to eventually: does equipment really matter?
Constraints sharpen skill. Abundance often softens it.
Photographers argue Sony versus Canon like it’s a blood feud. Filmmakers debate camera specs with the intensity of football rivalries. Designers obsess over processing power. Animators compare tablets like they’re choosing religions. And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, beginners sit quietly, convinced they can’t start until they upgrade.
I sit at the margin of that conversation. I lean toward skill over equipment, but I’m not naive enough to pretend gear doesn’t matter at all. The real question isn’t “does equipment matter?” It’s “can you handle the equipment you have?”
Because aperture is aperture. Shutter speed is shutter speed. Light is still light. Whether you’re holding a Canon, a Sony or borrowing someone’s Nikon at a wedding because yours just crashed, the fundamentals do not change. Photography is light painting. That physics doesn’t care about brand loyalty.
I used to have these conversations constantly when I was starting out. Even now, in the intermediate stage I’m in, I challenge people with this: what happens if you’re at a wedding and your Sony crashes and someone hands you a Nikon? Are you going to say “ah, me, I’m a Sony guy”? Or are you going to remember that technique and knowledge matter more than button placement and menu preferences?
Things like color science, positioning of controls, those are personal preferences. They matter for workflow. They matter for comfort. But they should never be the reason you can’t execute. Because at the end of the day, it’s still light painting. And light doesn’t care which logo is stamped on your lens.
There’s research backing this up, though we don’t talk about it enough in creative circles. Anders Ericsson’s work on deliberate practice shows that mastery comes from structured repetition and feedback, not from tools alone. In filmmaking history, technical limitations have often produced innovation. Early independent filmmakers made compelling work on minimal budgets because constraints forced creativity not comfort.
Constraints sharpen skill. Abundance often softens it.
For the past few months, I haven’t been actively doing work, so I don’t have some polished main setup to show off. But for the little photos I’ve been taking, for today’s shoot with a friend who came through just for fun, nothing serious, here’s what I used:
Photography: Canon EOS R100. A beginner camera. A starter body. It does the work.
Video: Nothing Phone 3, which I picked up in December as an upgrade from the Nothing Phone 3A. Yesterday I used the back camera. Today I tried the front selfie camera. It’s decent. Not spectacular. Decent.
Audio: Yesterday proved that my phone cannot do good audio. It really showed me. So today I pulled out the Zoom PodTrak P4 and the Zoom PodMic. I bought these for theMFpod, a podcast I do where we have conversations with career creatives. Go listen if you haven’t. The audio matters more than people think. Audiences tolerate imperfect visuals. They will not tolerate bad sound.
Lighting: Godox T600 with two Yongnuo triggers. A ring light I’ve had since Kibuli days, if you know what that means, you know. The stand is in need of a hospital. The stand is in desperate need of a hospital. But it’s still here. It’s done a lot of amazing photos for me. And it’s carried through.
Editing: Lenovo ThinkPad T480s. Not a Mac. Not some high spec Dell. A Lenovo. But it does the work with CapCut. Sometimes I use a Wacom tablet I bought with my second salary when I first started corporate work, back when I fancied it and didn’t know if I’d actually use it. Turns out it comes in handy for graphics, for brush tool work, for that selection thing when you need precision. I’m not a skin retoucher or illustrator. I just experiment.
Mouse: Porodo gaming mouse. Grabbed it from ayne.ug. Free promo for everyone on this challenge, why not.
That’s the setup. Nothing crazy. Nothing too simple. Actually, everything too simple. Nothing too crazy. You get it.
Yesterday, I was going through all this and thinking, okay, I need to do some heavy investment. I need to upgrade. And I know within the next few days you’ll probably notice I’m not the same Jackson who started this thing. Some investments will happen. Progress demands it. But right now, this is what we have. And this is what we’re using.
There’s a psychological trap creatives fall into called productive procrastination. You research gear. You compare specs. You plan upgrades. You tell yourself your content will be better once you invest properly. Sometimes that’s true. But often, it’s avoidance disguised as preparation.
Behavioral science calls this self handicapping. We delay execution so that failure, if it comes, can be blamed on tools instead of skill. It’s safer that way. It protects the ego. But it also keeps you stuck.
The truth is more uncomfortable: better equipment amplifies ability. It does not create it.
A high end camera in untrained hands produces expensive mediocrity. A skilled creative with entry level gear produces compelling work that people remember.
So how do you think about equipment practically, without falling into either extreme?
Master fundamentals first. Understand light, composition, sound, storytelling. These transfer across all tools. They are platform agnostic. They are brand agnostic. They will save you when your gear fails and someone hands you a backup you’ve never touched before.
Upgrade when limitations are measurable. Don’t upgrade because you’re bored or because someone online has shinier toys. Upgrade because your current tool is objectively blocking a specific outcome you need to achieve. If you can name the exact limitation and how the upgrade solves it, proceed. If you can’t, you’re not ready.
Prioritize audio for video. I learned this the hard way yesterday. Bad audio kills good ideas faster than bad lighting ever will. Invest here before you invest in lenses.
Build a repeatable system. Consistency improves faster when your setup is simple enough to assemble quickly. Complicated workflows slow you down. Simple, reliable systems let you focus on the work instead of the logistics.
Separate ego from equipment. Brand loyalty is marketing. Professional adaptability is survival. Choose the latter.
Equipment matters. But only in proportion to your ability to extract value from it.
This challenge is forcing me to create with what I have. Not ideal conditions. Not future upgrades. Not perfect lighting or perfect audio or perfect anything. Just now. Just this. Just work that gets published instead of planned.
Because culture is not shaped by perfect setups sitting in shopping carts.
It’s shaped by work that actually ships.
Day 2: tools revealed. Day 3: we keep going.
twinomugisha | 2026
