We live in an age of instant gratification, and as such, it can be hard to have the patience it takes to develop and master a skill over the course of several years, and photography certainly is not immune to that. There is a temptation to throw money at the problem, and while that shiny new camera or lens will certainly be fun to play with, it will not make you a better photographer. This insightful video discusses seven reasons why.
Coming to you from Peter Forsgård, this fantastic video essay discusses seven reasons why a new camera will not make you a better photographer. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with buying new gear because you enjoy it so long as you have the budget to do so, but where people often go wrong is in assuming that that equipment will make them a better photographer. While it might provide small differences in image quality or performance, the truth is that just about every modern camera and lens can produce quite nice images. Outside of the extreme outlier situations in which specialized equipment truly is needed, storytelling, composition, technique, creative vision, and editing will all have a greater impact on the quality of the final image than the cost of the lens or camera you use. More often than not, it is more creative inspiration and practice that is needed, not gear. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Forsgård.
I have to disagree with this. The flaw in his argument is that he ignores photographers – professional and enthusiast who are competent in the seven topics his discusses. When you have competency in those areas new equipment will most likely improve your images. In the video he mentions the ability to post process your images as a competency. I can say that the RAW images coming from my newest camera (2019) are significantly more malleable than the RAW images from the camera I owned in 2005. This one thing alone could warrant an upgrade in equipment.
2 aspects of photography where i disagree with this video - limitation of gear and Dynamic Range.
It really depends on what you are shooting. If you're doing a portrait or street photography, you need to have the skill to pull it off and no gear will help you. It's all about practice, knowledge and technique.
But if you're doing weddings or sports and you can shoot at 10 or 20fps instead of 4 or 6fps (and with more recent and accurate AF systems), then the gear will make a massive difference! It won't make your image better. But it will highly increase the chance of capturing that specific frame that you lost cause your old camera simply isn't ready for so many frames or such fast movements from the subject.
Also, if you're working with difficult light, DR comes into the equation. There's no way you can recover the same info in post from an image from a 5d II vs an R5 (just to name a simple example).
This seems like another retread of past issues....come on guys. Be more original.
Yep! A good photographer is a good photographer. Gear may not make him/her a better photographer, but it makes the job easier. I'm an okay photographer and switching from the venerable 5DIV to the R5, I have a better keeper rate simply because the focusing prowess of the R5. A camera that can grab focus on the eye of a chicadee (black head, black eye) tells me that my job is a LOT easier than it was.
I agree with everything! A new camera today has so many options for so many genres as well as autofocus options that can overcome most experts memories as well as knowing the right buttons to press. Also the many buttons and the very many selectable options for each. New camera get a book, the new A7RV fills a 600+ page book. When I got the A7S in '14 and getting a couple books by Brian Smith helped not only in camera operation but the many other genres it could do as well as the on camera apps available that no other camera ever had and still do not. First and foremost the need for a good eye meaning a good imagination to figure first to see what others do not second framing then to know the tools of the camera to capture. For me I started with film in the 70's while in the navy traveling the mediterranean countries on low cost tours my myself and never showing others but one night viewing some slides in my shop some others walked in and said they never saw what I captured even being in the same place at the time. Imagination is at play all the time say even driving down the road and you see a future shot when the sun is in a future place many months away. Planning a capture or using a camera tool like "Digital Filter" to do something like milky way over a bright foreground. Using bracketing 5 @ 3EV to capture a infocus moon over a bright foreground. Bracketing handheld with unheard of 12mm while others are doing long exposure on sticks with 35mm in a high contrast canyon.
Some genres like weddings are a forever Pro Jobs with no fun in others. Playtime builds imagination and reading about functions starts experimentation and many captures getting the right image makes for life long memory to redo's. On a whim went out and captured a lunar eclipse one morning just days after buying the A7s using an old Canon FD telephoto lens, just experimenting with imagination learning all the way faster than film days.
When I switched from Canon to Panasonic, and then to Sony, it took at least a year to get back to my previous level of familiarity and ability to use the tools intuitively without having to hunt for buttons or settings. I shoot events, often working in the dark, so the fast pace and the inability to see button labels on the body requires that I know intuitively where all my key controls are and don't have to think about how to operate the camera. The ability to work from muscle memory, without distraction, is worth more to me than the kinds of incremental technical improvements that we see every year. Plus, the IQ from my three 6-year-old a7RIIIs is absurdly more than my event and portrait clients actually need.
The one comment I disagree with is that an amateur photographer would be content with one camera a one lens. I don't want to make money with a camera as I've successfully built a business with another passion of mine and that destroyed some of that passion... So I'm not interested in professional photography (other than learning from you pros).
Here is where I think amateurs go wrong and is captured in the video: assuming the camera will help make them better photographers. Nope.
I started learning photography with a new Minolta X700 and a couple of lenses all of which I still have. I learned a lot, but it wasn't easy. Today I have a new Nikon Z7ii and a pack full of lenses that have exposed me to everything from macro photography to landscape photography. Could I do all this with one super zoom lens? Maybe. But it is more exciting to see what the possibilities are. And the best part was eluded to in the video: I don't have a timeline and can enjoy the journey! (No paying client.)
The rest of the video is spot on - and there is so much good information on this site and others. However, I still like hanging out with and sometimes hiring a professional photographer to learn from. There is a lot more to photography that seems to not make it into the videos.
Well, if you give Ansel Adams a 110 camera and some cube flashes I'm sure it won't change his professionalism, but what would it say about any images captured and then blown up to his usual print sizes? Decades ago, the 70's, I was taking a course from a local professional. He said the same thing, the camera doesn't matter. The following week i went and asked him, making up a story, I told him my cousin was getting married and wants him to do the wedding. He said yes of course. I then said that he wants him to shoot it in 110 format. He struggled with that for a bit and then said he would do it if he would sign a waiver of non-responsibilty should the photos not come out to his liking. So i asked....would he have to sign a waiver if you used your Mamiya RB67? He said of course not. I looked at him, he looked at me. I smiled and he knew what I just did. Don't fool yourself. You want quality results? Use quality equipment. You can't get a good offspring by breeding your horse with Tony the Pony. You'll need to breed her with Max the Italian Stallion.