General suggestion when responding

[runnah]

Zip it runnah.

 

[sashbar]

Watch collectors are way more mental. With hi-fi you can at least listen to different tunes.

 

[kathyt]

Try to give advice and work with the gear that the OP has rather than suggest very expensive equipment. Of course it'd be nice if everyone had super expensive glass and a tremendous studio but a lot of people can't afford it and have to work with what is given. It's lazy and counter productive.

Also don't assume that a photographer didn't get the best angle and position possible given the situation. I know when I am out and about I try to get the best locations but often roads, rivers, cliffs and trees make it difficult.

Solutions:
Get a part time job as a dancer for extra gear money.
Cut down trees, branches, and twigs if they are in your way.
Drive further down or get out and walk to get a better angle. Trespass if you have to. Hang out on a limb.
Build a studio out of trees, branches, and leaves. It would look "artistic."
No excuses runnah. No excuses!

 

[kathyt]

Zip it runnah.

Just teasing you. Hugs.

 

[runnah]

Try to give advice and work with the gear that the OP has rather than suggest very expensive equipment. Of course it'd be nice if everyone had super expensive glass and a tremendous studio but a lot of people can't afford it and have to work with what is given. It's lazy and counter productive.

Also don't assume that a photographer didn't get the best angle and position possible given the situation. I know when I am out and about I try to get the best locations but often roads, rivers, cliffs and trees make it difficult.

Solutions:
Get a part time job as a dancer for extra gear money.
Cut down trees, branches, and twigs if they are in your way.
Drive further down or get out and walk to get a better angle. Trespass if you have to. Hang out on a limb.
Build a studio out of trees, branches, and leaves. It would look "artistic."
No excuses runnah. No excuses!

If I danced for money I might lose some of my artistic integrity
I only cut down trees for sport
I will pass on trespass you cheeky lass
My house, shed, car, wife are all made from trees.

 

[TheFantasticG]

Audiophiles are the worst of the worst IMO. Car people are the same. Guys spend thousands of dollars and hours on the dyno to get that little more HP, yet most never go out and drive.

That's because those guys with those cars on those dynos aren't street legal and track driven only.

I know, cause I was almost one of those guys, but I live too far from the track.... Although I might like to go this route with my street bike. Part of the reason I have lost 20# in the last 7 weeks. Weight matters. Loosing weight is the easiest and cheapest mod I can do to make my bike faster

But next week: buying a new exhaust

 

[mmaria]

I am not surprised at all. For many years I was very much into hi-fi ( or hi-end, as they say) - and it was exactly the same: a lot of talk about gear, acoustics, frequency curves, vibrations, second reflections, materials and circuits, and very rarely the music was being mentioned. Hi-fi buffs usually know music better that an average guy, but a relatively small percent of them really understand it, very few attend classical concerts and a lot buy a system that costs you an arm and a leg and and acoustically treat their rooms turning it into some sort of a warehouse, only to listen to some compressed, overprocessed pop c**p. They are proud that their system allows them to count a number of fiddles in the orchestra and they can hear every cough and rustling in the audience. This is the exact equivalent of pixel peeping, "super sharpness", "creamy bokeh", and other stuff that is being talked about most of the time.

So it is exactly the same here, people buy "hi-end" cameras and shoot their cats and cars. But both hi-fi and photo gearheads get a great kick out of it because they love the gadgets and the technical side of their hobby. And it is easy - there are instructions and manuals, and you know exactly what happens if you press the button. And it is easy to give an advice, because all the answers are there on the net. When it comes to creative side of things, all of a sudden it all gets complicated, vague, personal and ambivalent. No buttons, no manuals.. sharpness as a creative tool becomes a bit more complex compared to sharpness as such.. So C&C, even if you get one, is also mostly about the technical stuff rather than a creative idea. I guess this is becase creative ideas are very difficult, first to grasp, then to analyse, and finally to put into words. Especially for a guy like me when words are foreign Even if you read books on photography, most authors, established photographers, struggle with their "creative analysis" and succumb to cliches, artificial clumsy concepts or sheer banalities.

Yeah, "those" people are pretty much everywhere.

sorry, totally off topic, but are you male or female?

 

[runnah]

Watch collectors are way more mental. With hi-fi you can at least listen to different tunes.

So true. I never understood expensive watches. Man jewelry I guess.

 

[KmH]

The Online Photographer: TOP Classic: Letter to George

 

[ratssass]

^^^good read

 

[bribrius]

I've been watching documentaries of photographers lately. I recall one where he says a good photograph "tells a story". It is a medium to say something, show something, make the onlooker ponder or relate. Often about life lessons, meanings.
I think (not that I know much) that there are photographs that are personal to you, that priceless no matter the quality of it. There are photographs for commercial use, to make money, which have no real personal value. There is art photographs, which can mean something to both to parties and have some value. But watching one of these documentaries, when you combine near perfection in the photograph, with strong meaning and a story, and it shows like art. Then that is where you get a hundred thousand dollar photograph that also means SOMETHING.

Maybe the five thousand dollar lens can help? But I don't think for many people that do this, that is what it is about..
some of the most famous or respected photographers took pictures on junks compared to todays standards. One of the most famous today, I watched about last night, still uses and was in the documentary A FILM CAMERA. Guys a millionaire and uses a ten year old film camera and carries ONE lens.

 

[bribrius]

^^^good read

it is. For those starting out, or in my case restarting. it is hard to decide how much we really want to invest. And if the larger investment might take some of the joy out of it. I caught myself looking at em1's the other day, and reading reviews... I think that is the first step in my pulling the trigger. looking at mark iii's too. Bad sign.. Next thing you know, ill be actually reading the camera insurance thread for pointers and stressing out over having fifteen k involved and paranoia...

 

[pgriz]

Quality of gear is on a continuum. On the one side is barely adequate, on the other is perfect in almost every way (except for the price). Somewhere in there is what your present skill level can handle. A bit further down the line, is what the situation needs. Still further down the line is what you think you need. And perhaps even further down is the gear you lust for. However, in the hands of a capable photographer, even the basic gear will give (usually) better images than someone who has expensive gear but doesn't know the basics of composition, or story-telling, or how to interact with a subject. There are, of course, outlier situations (low light, fast action, distant subjects), where the really good gear will make a big difference. But for 90% of image-making, this level of gear just isn't needed. It's a bit like driving a top-end Lotus in rush-hour traffic on potholed roads. You're not going to get the driving potential out of that situation. Find a nice windy road, newly paved, with no traffic... and you now can get a bit more potential out of that awesome equipment.

My usual suggestion is to get the cheapest gear that can do the basics. Learn enough to know what kind of photography you like to do, then start the investment process. And since most of us have skill levels that do NOT test the limits of the gear we have, there's a lot of learning that can be done before we start spending.