are you an equipment snob ?

[Roger Thoms]

I pretty much look down on anyone who's not shooting WP with an old 2D that has pinhole in the bellows, so yes I guess I'm a equipment snob.

Roger

 

[gone]

Nah, I'm no equipment snob. That sounds back a**wards to me. I'm an image snob. Who cares how the image was made? It's like looking at my paint brushes and thinking "boy, that sure is a nice sable brush!" Yes, it is. Soooooo, what have I done w/ it?

Not even in my wildest dreams can I imagine someone coming up to me, even, (or maybe especially) another photographer or painter, and saying "wow, that's a great painting. What brush did you use?" Think about it. It sounds really stupid. But like all artists, I wouldn't trust anything that I say. If someone showed me a great photo (vs a painting) I'd bet you a dollar to a donut that the first thing out of my mouth would be "wow, that's a great shot. What camera/lens did you use?" Sigh.

 

[Dan Fromm]

I'm not sure I've met someone who I thought was an equipment snob in the film world.

I have, alas, two of them, if by film you mean still photography. Both were Leica fanatics. I'm not sure I've met a motion picture equipment snob, but I started shooting films around the time S8 died and met few other people who shot it. I met the most memorable of them, a German, twice. Once, at Volcan Irazu's summit. There I was with a Beaulieu 5008 on a tripod, when a tour bus came up and disgorged a small pack of Germans, including a man carrying a 6008. I ran into him again several years later in Asuncion. He was in another pack of German tourists, this time carrying a Nizo.

My first first Leicanut friend tore himself apart with indecision. His wife was pregnant (first child), he wanted to shoot home movies of the newborn when it arrived, and he couldn't decide between the top-of-the-line Bauer and Nizo S8 cameras and an S8 Leicina. Leica isn't spelled Bauer or Nizo but Bauer and Nizo made S8 cameras that were more capable than the Leicina. What to do? What do do? He pushed me hard to get a Leicaflex SL; not possible, too expensive. By him, people who bought an affordable Japanese camera instead of bankrupting themselves to buy a Leica were themselves hopelessly second-best or worse. That's me.

The other was a mad psychiatrist, a thread-mount Leica fanatic who thought that only inferior people used other cameras. That's me. He wanted to get the best out of his equipment (there was nothing better than his gear, he said) so shot H&W Control Film and processed it in H & W Control developer. Remember them? Agfa microfilm and a developer for continuous tone that oxidized immediately the ampoule was opened. Naturally he shot hand-held.

 

[Early Riser]

I have always made it a point to use the absolutely best gear for the intended outcome. I have done this because for me photography has always been my livelihood and anything that gave me a better result easier, faster and more reliably was always of benefit to me. This has not been a particularly cost effective way to work though.

I think the word snob has a connotation that is more about having a sense of superiority because you have better gear. I've seen awesome work done with the worst of gear. A good story about this was one I heard about Irving Penn from a former assistant of mine who later assisted Penn. It seems on his first day working for Penn he noticed in the studio a rickety tripod with I think an old Deardorf on it, Hanging above the set was one of those cheap clamp reflector lights you would buy at the hardware store. He assumed that the light was just a focus light, but when Mr. Penn arrived to work on the set it was that cheap light that was the actual light source for the image. Apparently it had the quality of light that Mr. Penn wanted for the scene.