The 'right' equipment

[The_Traveler]

There was an extended discussion, now closed, about the 'right' equipment for a specific situation.

My belief and experience is that, once the equipment is above a certain threshold of capability, that the photographer is much, much, much more important than any lens or body. (every time I read this sentence I felt constrained to add another 'much')

Yes, you can always find situations where extreme capability makes better images but that's not the point.
A photographer works with what he/she has in hand.
The better the mind that drives the finger that presses the button, the better the result.

There is a photographer who posts here who purposefully works with simple equipment and matches his shots to the capabilities of his equipment ( http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/general-gallery/350562-tarp-pile.html )

Here is another example. taken with a P&S, hand-held, f3.5, 1/20 inside the Opera House in Paris.
A photographer uses what he/she has.

 

[wyogirl]

Thanks Lew. I didn't participate in the other thread, and I was starting to get a complex about my equipment. This reminded me that when I had a point and shoot, I took a great shot of a flower and had it enlarged to 16x20 to hang on my wall. I had so many people wanting to know where I bought that picture because they had no idea that I had taken it. And it was taken with a (nice) point and shoot camera.

I still want to upgrade my equipment, but not because someone might think its cheap.

 

[Rick58]

Well said Lew, This idea goes back to the masters before multipoint focus, built in exposure meters and even roll film.
The equipment doesn't make a photographer. It's the vision and skill of the person looking through the viewfinder or ground glass.

 

[limr]

I didn't participate in that other thread either because I wouldn't even know the difference between one Nikon or Canon DSLR vs another. Really, if my life depended on it, I'd be six feet under. I also couldn't find a way to describe how so very little I care. Why would or should I? The pictures are probably going to be processed to hell anyway, so isn't the software editing program just as important as the gear or skills with that gear?

And no, I'm not really arguing that it is, but it certainly points to the fact that there are many factors that go into a good picture other than the gear, so who the hell cares what other people are using?

 

[Steve5D]

I've seen some amazing images that have been taken with equipment which would never be confused as being "professional".

The most important factor will be, and always has been, the photographer. Period. You can put a 1D Mk-Whatever into the hands of someone who knows nothing of light and composition, and you're probably going to get a bad photograph (I'm allowing for chance). Put a Digital Rebel into the hands of an experienced professional, and you're going to get professional results...

 

[Overread]

The attempt to separate photographer, art, equipment, situation, subject, lighting into some kind of order or priority list is nearly always flawed. There will always be examples where one of those factors overruled the other and similar examples where a similar result was possible through a different combination of factors.

You'll never get an end to the argument.


Personally half the time this comes up I get the feeling that its partly fuelled by a desire to ensure that the person remains important next to the march of technology and is often argued most strongly by those who are most afraid and least experienced in more advanced cameras.


In the end get the best you can afford - use it with the best knowledge you can gather together and off you go.

 

[limr]

You'll never get an end to the argument.

In the end get the best you can afford - use it with the best knowledge you can gather together and off you go.

Amen!

 

[bribrius]

I didn't participate in that other thread either because I wouldn't even know the difference between one Nikon or Canon DSLR vs another. Really, if my life depended on it, I'd be six feet under. I also couldn't find a way to describe how so very little I care. Why would or should I? The pictures are probably going to be processed to hell anyway, so isn't the software editing program just as important as the gear or skills with that gear?

And no, I'm not really arguing that it is, but it certainly points to the fact that there are many factors that go into a good picture other than the gear, so who the hell cares what other people are using?

That is up to the person taking the photograph. you can avoid processing, which is a huge crutch as you know when you hit the shutter you are allowed a lower bar because you can process it. you can avoid, taking mulitiple photgraphs, guessing at settings, because it is digital and doesn't cost anything to take a lot of photos. And you can avoid the auto or scene modes, and make yourself use the manual.
i use auto and scene, then switch to manual. And test myself to see if i can make a far better photo than the auto setting. i am kind of getting stuck with post processing to some extent though. As i keep hitting the limits of what i can expect from the camera i normally use. It is hard to tell, if someone knows what they are really doing from looking at a picture they took. It is hard to tell how much of it they did, and how much of it was technology.
Me personally, i want to be good enough to walk outside, look at the light, look at what im wanting to take a picture of. Manually adjust my camera and almost hit it dead on the first try. im not their yet. so im taking some pretty crappy photos sometimes. But i am really stuck on HOW i take a photo not so much what it comes out like...

 

[Rick58]

In the end get the best you can afford - use it with the best knowledge you can gather together and off you go.

The lens is the one piece of equipment that can never be argued when it comes to equipment. You can have $3,000.00 camera and years of experience, but if you strap a 3rd rate lens on it, none of that matters.

 

[BobSaget]

Good post. I think a lot of high end equipment and the way it is used is overkill. In terms of image quaility, an old body with a 6mp sensor with a kit lens is more than enough for web publishing and 8x10 prints.
Some of us, fall prey to marketing that makes us feel that what we have is inadequate and we move up to pro equipment. a "beginner's" DSLR is kind of an oxymoron. Sure they are good for a novice, but that doesn't mean that if you are "Advanced" you have no use for it. Also, why does my "Semi-Pro" body have a green mode on it?

 

[The_Traveler]

That is up to the person taking the photograph. you can avoid processing, which is a huge crutch as you know when you hit the shutter you are allowed a lower bar because you can process it. you can avoid, taking mulitiple photgraphs, guessing at settings, because it is digital and doesn't cost anything to take a lot of photos. And you can avoid the auto or scene modes, and make yourself use the manual.
i use auto and scene, then switch to manual. And test myself to see if i can make a far better photo than the auto setting. i am kind of getting stuck with post processing to some extent though. As i keep hitting the limits of what i can expect from the camera i normally use. It is hard to tell, if someone knows what they are really doing from looking at a picture they took. It is hard to tell how much of it they did, and how much of it was technology.
Me personally, i want to be good enough to walk outside, look at the light, look at what im wanting to take a picture of. Manually adjust my camera and almost hit it dead on the first try. im not their yet. so im taking some pretty crappy photos sometimes. But i am really stuck on HOW i take a photo not so much what it comes out like...

I don't care if something is a 'crutch'; hurrah for auto-focus, hurrah for auto-exposure settings, hurrah for zoom lenses, hurrah for post-processing.
Doing something without these or other helping hands to prove my macho-ness means absolutely nothing to me.

I use whatever I have to get the results I want.
If the lighting was perfect for the results, great.
If not, I'll do whatever I have to do that I couldn't do with the camera.

The only thing that counts for me is the final picture, the only thing.

 

[limr]

I didn't participate in that other thread either because I wouldn't even know the difference between one Nikon or Canon DSLR vs another. Really, if my life depended on it, I'd be six feet under. I also couldn't find a way to describe how so very little I care. Why would or should I? The pictures are probably going to be processed to hell anyway, so isn't the software editing program just as important as the gear or skills with that gear?

And no, I'm not really arguing that it is, but it certainly points to the fact that there are many factors that go into a good picture other than the gear, so who the hell cares what other people are using?

That is up to the person taking the photograph. you can avoid processing, which is a huge crutch as you know when you hit the shutter you are allowed a lower bar because you can process it. you can avoid, taking mulitiple photgraphs, guessing at settings, because it is digital and doesn't cost anything to take a lot of photos. And you can avoid the auto or scene modes, and make yourself use the manual.
i use auto and scene, then switch to manual. And test myself to see if i can make a far better photo than the auto setting. i am kind of getting stuck with post processing to some extent though. As i keep hitting the limits of what i can expect from the camera i normally use. It is hard to tell, if someone knows what they are really doing from looking at a picture they took. It is hard to tell how much of it they did, and how much of it was technology.

I agree, the auto settings on the camera do certainly muddy the waters and make it difficult to know how where the credit/blame goes: camera, human, software. This is why it's something of an exercise in futility to separate the factors and try to put them into a hierarchy of importance.

Me personally, i want to be good enough to walk outside, look at the light, look at what im wanting to take a picture of. Manually adjust my camera and almost hit it dead on the first try. im not their yet. so im taking some pretty crappy photos sometimes. But i am really stuck on HOW i take a photo not so much what it comes out like...

Preaching to the choir here. I shoot film almost exclusively so I don't really have the luxury to shoot ten, twenty, thirty frames of the same thing until I get it right. Well, if I had an unlimited budget to buy film, then I could... But I always try to get it as right as I can in the camera, not only because that's what I like to do, but I also know that I'm limited in what kind of post-processing I can do. Plus, I'm just very very stubborn and don't like to rely on technology to get my shot. Sure, I'll use a light meter when the light is tricky, and I'm starting to experiment with aperture-priority shooting (with the one camera I have that allows that), but I want to know that if my light meter or battery sh*ts the bed, that I can still get a good shot.

 

[Derrel]

Take a day's worth of photos using an 18-55 f/3.5~5.6 kit zoom on a crop-frame consumer body.

Take a day's worth of photos using high-end Canon or Nikon glass on a full-frame body.

It becomes clear just by looking at the images which were shot with run-of-the mill, pedestrian, or "normal" equipment, and which photos were made with high-end or exotic lenses.

A really simple comparison: use a crop-frame, consumer-level camera with a slow kit zoom that tops out at f/5.6 at 135mm, and then shoot the same picture set using the Canon 135mm f/2-L prime lens on a 5D Mark III. I can guarantee you that even a moderately-talented hack can set the 135 f/2 L to f/2.8 an make photo after photo after photo that simply can.not.be. made with the kit zoom.

Your idea is good, insofar as it goes, but it skips over the idea of "professional photos" which look, and which appear, immediately, to be of the highest quality, and clearly visually-differentiated from the photos that "regular people" can make with the kind of equipment they own.

Compare soccer or football photos made with a 55-200mm f/4.5~5.6 consumer lens with those made with a 300mm or 400mm f/2.8 lens. Visually, there is a clear, obvious, and substantial difference between the "amateur-level" optics and the "exotic" high-speed long tele images.

 

[The_Traveler]

but I want to know that if my light meter or battery sh*ts the bed, that I can still get a good shot.

I understood everything up to this point.

Could you, would you explain why you would want a picture of a bed in that condition?

 

[bribrius]

That is up to the person taking the photograph. you can avoid processing, which is a huge crutch as you know when you hit the shutter you are allowed a lower bar because you can process it. you can avoid, taking mulitiple photgraphs, guessing at settings, because it is digital and doesn't cost anything to take a lot of photos. And you can avoid the auto or scene modes, and make yourself use the manual.
i use auto and scene, then switch to manual. And test myself to see if i can make a far better photo than the auto setting. i am kind of getting stuck with post processing to some extent though. As i keep hitting the limits of what i can expect from the camera i normally use. It is hard to tell, if someone knows what they are really doing from looking at a picture they took. It is hard to tell how much of it they did, and how much of it was technology.
Me personally, i want to be good enough to walk outside, look at the light, look at what im wanting to take a picture of. Manually adjust my camera and almost hit it dead on the first try. im not their yet. so im taking some pretty crappy photos sometimes. But i am really stuck on HOW i take a photo not so much what it comes out like...

I don't care if something is a 'crutch'; hurrah for auto-focus, hurrah for auto-exposure settings, hurrah for zoom lenses, hurrah for post-processing.
Doing something without these or other helping hands to prove my macho-ness means absolutely nothing to me.

I use whatever I have to get the results I want.
If the lighting was perfect for the results, great.
If not, I'll do whatever I have to do that I couldn't do with the camera.

The only thing that counts for me is the final picture, the only thing.

we all have different ways of thinking. And do this for different reasons. No one way is right. if the final picture was all that was important to me, i wouldn't even bother with a camera i could just go buy a photo somewhere. If i really had to SELL photos, as a business, i couldn't afford the luxury perhaps to think this way. But i don't need the money, so don't really have to make money doing this. A luxury for me. But part of the reason, i even do this, is to see if I can do it. Its a challenge and learning a little never hurt anybody. It is a personal thing for me. I mean, if it was just about the photo, i would just go buy a photo. It is more about personal enjoyment. A little bit of peace.
kind of like, buying light room or a better program for post processing, which i still haven't done even though it has been recommended numerous times on here. why? Because i really don't care if people like my photos or not i guess. im not out to process or impress anybody. so maybe ill get a new program, in due time. The OPPOSITE of machoness. More of, nothing to prove and not concerned.... :thumbup:
im going to take a few photos, hang a few on my walls (kind of like it did when started painting) even if they kind of suck. Give some away, take some of others to help them out if they want. Might even sell some. who knows. im not really that worried about it...