It seems like almost every month the camera manufacturers are announcing a “new and improved” camera – and I’m sure they are. But the question becomes, “when is a camera good enough?” The marketing that goes along with each new camera is phenomenal – they are convincing all of us that this new camera will fix what ails our “picture problems”. Many of these problems we didn’t know we had and our clients certainly didn’t! Now I’m as much in favour of capitalism as the next guy (maybe more so) but that doesn’t mean we have to buy into the this race. Now, the simple answer to the question I posed, is when it does what you want it to do. Obviously there are many other factors but for me it stopped being about the equipment long ago.
Did you ever stop and wonder how much better does a paintbrush need to be for an artist to create a masterpiece? I mean in the last several hundred years the lowly paintbrush has been improved upon multiple times over, right? Do we have better painters now than Rembrandt, Reubens or Singer Sargent? I think not. So my point is that the quality of the results are not as dependent on the quality of the tools as much as they are on the quality of the knowledge. in other words, it’s not what you hold between your hands, it’s what you hold between your ears.
This portrait of my daughter, Ashley, was created in a parking lot, on a very gray day on a small camera with a sensor the size that many a pro would scoff at. But I saw the possibilities and and the nice light and knew where to position her to use that light to the fullest. Of course I also knew what I could do in my digital darkroom (the same Photoshop everyone has) to bring out the full capacity of the captured information.
So the overall point I am making is your hard-earned money is better spent on learning than on than on buying the latest and greatest “toy”. Of course, new toys are nice and neat and fun but that feeling will wear off quickly whereas the new knowledge will stay with you forever. Now I have to go and play with my new lens
