New year, new gear? Or is it time for you to evaluate the photography gear purchases you’ve made in the previous years? Whether you’re looking to upgrade soon or just sticking to your setup for now, it’s always worth taking a step back to assess the tools at your disposal. Which of them still serve you well? Which of them ended up being bad investments and taught you a thing or two about buying gear more wisely?

In the video above, Atlanta-based landscape photographer Evan Ranft talks about some of the gear that he regrets buying and why they it turns out weren’t smart investments. While he posted this in June 2020, some of the factors he described most likely still apply to photography gear purchases we could be making today or in the future. Hopefully, he said, we could apply his insights and shift our ideas into “something that makes a little bit more sense.”