Gear, Part II

On the subject of equipment upgrades, I know every photographer struggles at least some of the time with the question of whether or not you need a new camera, new lenses, or a new tripod or head mount. And for every photographer who asks the question, the answer is always a solid, definite, “It Depends.”

In very general terms, for the casual vacation photographer, the answer is almost always no, unless your camera is so antiquated that it lacks the functionality you require, or is no longer supported by the manufacturer, or no longer performs as it once did (I’ve discovered dropping a camera onto a marble floor does not improve its operation one bit). For someone like you, a reasonably inexpensive digital camera can be yours for under $100 that will do just about anything you’re going to need it to do, and software is available for your computer that can accomplish in post editing what your camera cannot do in the field. My current phone possesses photo and video capabilities that actually exceed those of my first digital camera, so you don’t have to buy an expensive rig to take decent photos. If you insist on shooting with film, you can probably go even cheaper by buying a gently-used one, but just realize that there are fewer and fewer companies making film these days, and it may make better sense from a long-term investment standpoint to bite the bullet and go digital.

For the amateur photographer or hobbyist, and anyone above that level, you may or may not require better gear. It really depends on the kind of photography you plan on doing. For $300-$500, there are some really excellent digital point-and-shoot cameras out there with good enough resolution to print clear 8x10’s, with different shooting modes that take most of the guesswork out of taking photos under different lighting conditions and a variety of subjects. I’ve even sold a few prints of shots I took with my old Olympus C300, so you’re already getting into the area where your current camera may be good enough.

Okay, I hear you ask, if my current camera is good enough, why do professional photographers buy cameras for thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars? Are they really that much better? Do they really need to spend that much for what they do?

Yes… and no. Great photography is a synthesis of technology, talent, skill, planning and a dash of good, old-fashioned luck (more on that in another post). I know photographers who regularly take gallery-worthy photos with their iPhones. I have also witnessed snobbish dilettantes whip out their $30,000 Hasselblads and their 1:1.2 Swarovski crystal lenses, train them on the mountains at the first hint of sunrise and take a series of stunningly bad blurry photos of their thumbs.

Think of some of the pioneering photographers in history and the gear they had to work with. Some of the first cameras were little more than a piece of film in a wooden box, with a simple glass lens and a sliding shutter, that you then mailed back to the manufacturer to develop. Imagine waiting a week to get a print of your single photo, and you can see the kind of planning and forethought that a photographer had to do before ever taking a photo. (Don’t believe me? Look up “Box Brownie” on Google or Wikipedia sometime). Ansel Adams lugged a sheer mass of bulky, awkward equipment up Half Dome that seems positive ludicrous by today’s standards. Yet look at the powerful images they created with a level of technology we simply don’t have the patience to fiddle with today. The tech does not an instant masterpiece create.

That being said, there is also a place for better tools. If I handed you a section of tree stump, a handful of stone hand-axes from 5000 BC, and a box of modern surgical steel chisels and said, “I’d like you to carve me a salad bowl,” you would probably choose the steel chisels over the stone tools, wouldn’t you?” (Okay, you’d PROBABLY turn and point at the Ikea catalog, but work with me here)

A master wood carver would know how to use the stone tools to hollow out the stump and eventually create the salad bowl for me, but he would probably do it faster and with less swearing with better tools. You’d end up with the same masterfully carved bowl, but the woodworker might not actually hate you when he’s done if you gave him the right tools for the job to begin with. The same goes for a camera rig: You can spend a lot of money on the fanciest cameras and lenses, but if you don’t know how to take a good photo to begin with, chances are pretty good you’re still going to be disappointed with the results.

So the results you get from your photography really depend more on your abilities as a photographer than on the gear you bring with you. A better camera and higher quality glass won’t make you a better photographer, in other words, but once you start to improve your skills, better gear could make it easier to achieve the same results.

I experienced this this past weekend, at a shoot I did at a dressage show in western Washington. I did a few sessions at this indoor arena before, but because the lighting was dim on all but the brightest days, my lower-end rig just wasn’t up to the task much of the time. My telephoto lenses tended toward vignetting and chromatic aberrations, and didn’t have the light-gathering capabilities I really needed. My camera was prone to a good deal of noise at high ISO, due in no small part to the manufacturer trying to cram so many megapixels onto a ¾-frame CMOS, so many of the images turned out grainy. Since I was dealing with large, live animals, I didn’t feel comfortable using much flash, because I didn’t want the liability or guilt arising from killing some innocent rider because I spooked their horse right out from under them.

Yesterday, though, I cranked the ISO as high as 4000 in the early morning and dropped it to 1600 as the day wore on. This let me keep the shutter speed between 1/250 and 1/400 sec most of the time, and got great depth of field with the aperture as wide open as it would go. No flash required, I could keep the shutter speed fast enough that I didn’t get motion blur unless I wanted it, and no noise or graininess that I could see in the final images. Before, I would have to process my photos through Photoshop to try to adjust for the exposure and attempt to remove the noise, and many shots came out okay in the end, but now I can get shots that are just as good without having to retouch them at all. Now I can worry a lot less about how it’s going to look and focus more on getting what I want in the frame, because I know the camera is actually capable of capturing what my eye sees and my artistic sensibilities envision.

There is, of course, the final extreme end of the spectrum. Are there fancier cameras out there than mine? You bet. There are medium- and large-format cameras that have the luxury of placing 60 megapixels or more on their sensors due to roomier real-estate (more on that in another post, if you’re interested), higher shutter speeds to catch bullets in flight or hummingbird’s wings in motion, hand-ground crystal lenses from fifth-generation jewelers, lenses that are so large they look like artillery and require the help of two grown men and a small boy to carry around. Are they actually better than I have right now? Overall, no – they’re overkill for my daily use, even on a professional level. I rarely run into a situation where I think to myself, “Darn, if only I had a 1200mm lens with me, I’d be able to get this shot of something a mile away;” I just try to get a little closer to my subject, and I'm thankful I don't have to haul a 35-pound lens around. Until I’m actually asked to shoot something for a mural or billboard-sized print, I’m probably not going to need a medium- or large-format camera, either, nor can I afford one anyway (and besides, there are ways to blow up images through digital processing that promise to preserve detail even as you expand the image). And let's be brutally honest: I'm kind of clumsy, and given the choice between dropping and breaking a $2500 camera or a $25,000 camera... I'll cry less over having to buy a new $2500 camera.

Moral of the story: think about the kind of photography you want to do, shop around to find the gear that gives you what you want at a price you’re comfortable with, learn everything you can about all the features of your new camera and truly learn how to use them, and be happy with your decision in the knowledge that yours was an intelligent and considered choice. With photographic gear, as in much of life, it’s not so much about getting everything you want, it’s wanting everything you have.