Camera gear is not only meant for professional work, it is a ton of fun as well. However, it is quite expensive, and as such, every purchase you make should be carefully considered beforehand. This helpful video tutorial features some good advice on how to choose the right gear for you.
Coming to you from Leigh The Snap Chick, this great video discusses how to choose the proper camera gear for you. The important thing to remember, I think, is that we can often get a lot more out of our gear than we think. That is not to say there are not situations in which a certain lens or camera body will enable you to get shots that you could not get otherwise, but before you pull out your credit card, really ask yourself if a bit of work on technique or exploring your creativity might be the better answer. Because, even if you do get that new gear, once the novelty wears off, those deficiencies will still be there. The situations in which we truly need to upgrade our gear to get the shots we desire are less common than we might think. Check out the video above for the full rundown.
It's obviously a highly subjective matter. As a rule, I've only been buying cameras/lenses that fill gaps in my kit for client work - basically, my gear makes money, and I don't buy anything that won't pay for itself in bookings. That has meant selling old, "fun" gear, selling extraneous kit lenses, passing up on "good deals" that aren't filling the kit or that appear at the wrong time. I'd like to splurge and get some landscape and wildlife zooms... but they can wait :)
When I used to use DSLR's, I had to pass on owning prime lenses because I needed two zooms for my work, which featured a fair bit of video. I’m not that partial to zooms (personal preference) and now that I'm no longer doing that work, I get to use the camera and prime lenses that make my photography a pleasure.
Whatever you have, you can only be efficient with so much at a time