in 11 years i have asked this question maybe 4 times
and it is always interesting to read different people's thoughts on this subject ..
why is it that many people believe if they have expensive equipment,
excessively large format cameras &c. that they will be better photographers?
im not talking the fun factor here, or that what used to be obscenely expensive
professional gear a few years back now costs a song and a dance so why not ..
but the fact that if a person cant drive the cheapest of the cheap cars ..
lets say a 1980 chevy citation that they think if they have a carbon fiber
bmw they will be an expert driver?
is it perception? that others will think people are experts, after all the car cost
as much as a house in 1970, and that perceived greatness rubs off
and the photographer actually becomes great by association?
i am as stumped in 2014 as i was in 2006.
back in 2006 i remember an apug member bought an 11x14 ebony (new)
with lenses that cost more than my first 2cars thinking
it would make her an expert, she hiked with it on her back
and did all the things she did with her spotamatic or whatever it was she had before and her photographs were less than expert in look.
she must have exposed thousands of dollars worth of color and b/w film.
i just wondered why she would do this, cause i never understood the point ... sure people do whatever they want and its their money and their business and it really doesnt matter ... but
i just wonder what the point is ..
thanks
john
if you want to post something not serious i couldnt care less
im not anal retentive about seriousness.
I had a professor in college who was one of the highest paid commercial photographers at the time, mostly shooting product.
He used to tell this story to each class - he always kept a massive 4X5 setup on a rolling tripod, and massive lights arrays all around the shoot area, but then would do most of the work with his then state of the art Canon G5 point and shoot. At some point he bought a big filter carrier and flash bracket for that camera to make it look more serious, the reason being that several high profile clients refused to have their product shot with a tiny dinky looking camera.
So it really is mostly in the hand of the photographer. Sure - some cases require expensive gear which with out, a shoot cannot be done, but this type of specialty gear is rare, and those cases are about 0.1% of most of what anyone who gets paid to shoot needs.
In most cases, talented photographers will make the same great work with junk gear, like a holga or Iphone, and even with dinky 35mm cameras, that they would have with top of the line gear.
Bad photographers on the other hand, will stay bad regardless of how good, and more amusingly, how expensive the gear is. They will still use that brand new custom ordered 8X10 camera/SLR/MED format and specialty lenses to make god awful images of boring things, the same as they would have done with lesser gear.
In the newsroom - functionality is key. Because no one actually ever pays for that gear (agency pays, or gear is sponsored by the manufacturer) the only gear that gets used, lasts, and is useful - is what actually works in the field. Because 80% of leicas are broken when they leave the factory, they never really get massive use in daily/spot news, same goes for hasselblad (though now that they are made by Fuji in japan, they are slightly better).
Numbers: Is am AF 300mm F2.8 lens expensive? if you count it compared to its fractional value of a corolla, compared to some other 300mm lens, the numbers might say it is expensive but if you cannot get the shot of some visiting dignitary because you ran out of Fstops, and that shot cost your desk 5000$, it is not very expensive. If you are shooting your kids baseball game in a sunny sunday, it is very expensive.
Interestingly enough - both canon and nikon usually price the "pro" top tier SLR bodies about X3 above the high end "not pro" high end camera - however, some cameras are just so good, and so much easier to use - in the digital age, most (if not all) professional photojournalists i worked with opted to buy and use their own smaller, less expensive SLR bodies, rather then using the FREE large and heavy "pro" bodies for a myriad of reasons.
So those lesser cameras did need service more often, but they were so cheap relatively, that who cared...
, and then this piece, and then that piece, and then some other piece over there. I've had to stop making myself go to ebay more than once because things began to get out of hand.
