Rule number two is very simple — stop buying cameras.
Over the course of 37 years Nikon introduced five top of the range film SLR’s, the F1 to F5. With the announcement of the high end Nikon D5 in 2016 it took only 17 years to get to the same stage with digital. Seventeen years, is of course, a very long time in the world of digital. Step down from the professional level cameras to the consumer end and things speed up considerable. It took Nikon less than six years to move from the D5000 to the D5500. I’m using Nikon as an example because I have the information to hand. The same would be true of the other major camera makers.
Not only do manufacturers replace — or ‘upgrade’ as we’ve been taught to say — models more frequently, they generally have a much wider range of models available as well. The end result is that each year photographers are bombarded with dozens of new cameras, launched with glitzy advertising campaigns and devoured by the photographic internet, desperate to fill up a few more pages with near identical articles largely lifted from the manufacturers’ press releases.
Now, I understand that comparing film and digital cameras is not comparing like with like. The rate of development in the digital world is unmatched by the slow evolution of largely mechanical film cameras. Most significantly, the move away from film as a separate component to a digital sensor as an integral part of the camera has changed the way we think about and buy cameras. Nevertheless, do we really need all of these new cameras? Does each new release genuinely represent significant progress over the previous model? When was the last time a newly released camera offered a real, decisive step up in photographic capability compared to its predecessor?
Routinely each new model brings no more that a few design tweaks, a few more megapixels, marginal gains in dynamic range, noise control, autofocus speed and the like — things that many photographers, being honest, don’t really know how to make the best use of on the cameras they already own. The camera makers need us to believe that every new camera represents a fundamental step forward so that we’ll keep buying the new, slightly refined, version of the previous model. For me, one of the best decisions any committed photographer can make is to get off the camera consumer merry-go round.
There are two main reasons why I think this is a good thing. First, it saves money. There are people out there with sufficient disposable income that they think nothing of acquiring a fleet of high end cameras and upgrading them regularly. Most of us, though, aren’t in that position. With money to spend on photography, it might be better spent on other things, whether that be equipment — lenses, tripods, flashguns — or things that will make us better photographers — photo books, training courses, workshops or an airline ticket to somewhere we’ve never been before.
Second, and more importantly, if we are never happy with our photography and never comfortable with our equipment, we are never going to be the best we can be as photographers.
Never happy? If we constantly expect that the next camera will be ‘the one’, that it will solve the problems we have with our current setup, then that suggests we’re not happy with the results we’re getting. However, as the old saying has it ‘a bad workman blames his tools’. If we don’t like our photographs, it’s probably not our cameras that are the problem. Imaging that the next model, or even a completely different system, is the solution will prevent us from ever looking to our own abilities as the element that needs ‘upgrading’.
Never comfortable? With ever lengthening menus, multiplying buttons and dials and thickening manuals it takes time and patience to master a camera. Increasing customisation can help, enabling us to set our cameras up as we prefer, but it can also make things more complicated still as we try to work out which function to assign to which button for our ideal set up. Unless you’re the kind of person who sets everything on auto and shoots away, using a camera competently does initially require some thought.
I say initially, because the photographer’s goal should be that, ultimately, everything becomes instinctive. However, that presupposes familiarity with the camera, and if we change that camera every year for a newer model with new features, or a different brand with a completely different layout, how will we ever become familiar with it? Not only in the details of how everything works, but in the particularities, or indeed peculiarities, of specific cameras — the metering system or the autofocus system, for example, both of which are increasingly complex on all cameras.
The two photographs in this post were taken in 2021 and 2022 respectively with my 2010 vintage Panasonic Lumix LX5. Needless to say, after that many years I’m totally familiar with this camera and its abilities, limitations and quirks. As a result, I am still using this camera to get good (in my opinion) photographs a decade and more on.
If you are not comfortable with your camera, if your camera doesn’t get out of the way when you're shooting, then your camera is going to be a distraction, a barrier, limiting your photographic potential. Perhaps there are some remarkable people out there who can become familiar with a new camera in a few days, but if there are, they are few and far between. Perhaps there are those who can run two or more camera systems and switch with ease between them. Again, I suspect it’s not common. Most of us aren’t like that. I’m certainly not. Getting to the point where the camera becomes so familiar that it practically disappears takes time, lots of time. Unfortunately, time is something very few of us are prepared to give, especially when a big announcement is coming, and we start dreaming of a shiny new toy. The truth is, though, that a new camera probably won’t make us better photographers; it might even make us worse.
In full agreement. And still longing for a good TL film camera….