Brace yourself.
This is one of my random neural firings to clear my mind sort of posts.
The weak of heart and short of attention span should flee now. Still here? Well. I warned you.
I do not think I am being hypocritical. Or at least it is not my intention to be.
All camera gear posts are not the topic here. But certain types are. For me anyway. And I am not saying these posts should not exist. Just that I personally do not have an interest in them. People are as free to write them as I am not to read them. That brings up a point…
Why continue reading a post if it is not your cup of tea?
Once I realize a post is not for me, I stop reading it. I feel no need to digest the entirety of a post and then leave less than pleasant ramblings in the comment section. Just walk away. I am not their audience is all. And that is ok. Everything need not cater to my whims. One site I used to enjoy a great deal years ago has slowly slid into being a tad self-aggrandizing, cynical, and a touch caustic. I let it go for a while since the balance of their posts over time have been excellent and many still are. But recently they seemed to lean in on the cynical side more so I… simply removed them from the sources for my news thread. Again. Not my cup of tea and that is alright. Am I to complain and attempt to make a whole website change direction? No. That would be crazy.
I had someone point out recently that they had a question for me regarding one of my blog posts. They would have left a comment there but I do not have them turned on. They reached out to me as others have done, on Instagram. Some by way of a comment as this gentleman did, and some will message me. Both are fine. It was an early decision to disable blog post comments. Mostly because I found I got two kinds of comments:
- Most often comment spam.
- Less often a troll would arrive.
Had no interest in either. Occasionally I would get a legitimate question and/or a kind word but that is easily addressed elsewhere as noted above.
Okay. I will also admit I am not a fan of comment sections. Not because I do not want to know what folks think. I always answer valid questions elsewhere. But because too often comments are where the unpleasant folk dwell. As a legendary pugilist and part time philosopher once said:
“Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
-Mike Tyson
Also as stated in my about ramble I see this space as more of a repository and archive for my random neural firings, not as a means for back and forth communication. I have gotten a taste of that when posting to 35mmc and while they are a pleasant bunch for the most part, it has not motivated me to turn on comments for my page again. Whoo! That was a mess of a tangent. Where was I? Right…
Camera gear musings.
A lot of this comes from some time spent reading these posts year after year. You start seeing patterns. I will list the type of posts that no longer interest me personally and then add a little detail on each.
- Gear churn road works.
- This vs. that.
- This is the best x, y, z ever.
- Advancement whoziwhats will be the end of everything… again.
Again I would like to state something. I am not saying that others should no longer write such posts. First and foremost they are grown and free to do as they like and there is an audience for this. Great. It is just that I am not that audience. Or in some cases, I am no longer that audience.
What happened?
Mainly? All gear is really good now. I mean really good. I could make do with any brand or format on the market right now. Sure, some are superior in relatively niche fields like sports and wildlife. That brand or other may have the most appropriate lenses, specs, and performance for that task. But most I know do not really fall into that number. For most, I believe nearly any brand will do nowadays. This is a good thing.
So back to the list above.
Gear churn road works.
To me, quite a few gear posts go a little something like this.
Whatever camera you have is crap. Even if we told you it was the best last month or year. You need this new one now.
I coined the phrase IT road works after many years in IT. Specifically Healthcare IT. For example, one product I had a long run with was Pyxis. Dealt with it from the day I started as the Manager of Pharmacy Computer Services at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan and it followed me down to UNC Healthcare. Managed their implementations, upgrades, and support. One of the full upgrades included storage and a configuration staging area in a Bronx warehouse where we had a round trip shuttle truck delivering new units to Manhattan and returning old units to The Bronx. Dealt with Pyxis 18 years in total or thereabouts. After a while, you see a pattern. Massive big bang version upgrade followed by incremental upgrades to the existing system over time until you get to a point where the whole system needs… a massive big bang version upgrade. What does that have to do with roadworks? I am glad I imagined that you asked. While in the latter years of my college career, I intermittently worked as Transportation Construction Inspector II for the New York State Department of Transportation. Even got a commendation letter for heroism for my troubles along the way but that is a story for a different day. Some projects involved upgrades to the existing road. Some projects involved a complete replacement. Some projects included a totally new approach to what was once in place. But guess what? By now all of these projects that were spanking new when I walked away from them have all become antiquated and have likely been replaced multiple times since. What was once new becomes old and is eventually replaced.
All that was a long winded way of saying this happens everywhere including cameras. That latest phone, car, shoe, and yes camera will soon be old news. Think of all the cameras that have come out with much fanfare that are now old news. Now some new upstart has arrived that is the best thing since sliced bread…
But there is a crucial difference. Where that road has actual limitations or may be unsafe making replacement a must, upgrading cameras is mostly a personal preference thing. I will get into this more further down the list but in most cases, one can get along just fine with what you have. Especially if it has been purchased in the last few years. But if you are not careful it is easy, it used to be for me anyways, to get swept up in the hype and upgrade immediately. And it is not that I do not upgrade. I just wait much longer and skip upgrades until features appear that I can actually benefit from and/or I just want to or it seems prudent to update my daily use gear.
I will not mention any particular brand because it happens with almost all of them. And I get it. Camera companies need to sell new gear and websites need those clicks to generate that ad money. But as time passes the obviousness of it all becomes more apparent.
This vs. that.
This brand vs. that brand. This new camera vs. the one it replaces. Film vs. digital. This sensor size vs. that sensor size. So on and so forth.
For me these comparisons often miss the point. There are a lot more factors at play than these two pieces of gear in isolation.
- Is what you have already sufficient to meet your needs right now?
- That was me with the Sony A7III for a good long while. Sony released a mess of cameras since the A7III, but until a release last year, I was not compelled to upgrade. And in all honesty, the A7III could still meet my needs today. It was purely a “want to upgrade” situation, not a need.
- Back when I dabbled with Canon twice I was perfectly happy with the Canon EOS RP. Were there better cameras in their line up? Yep. But the RP gave me what I was looking for. The same would apply to most systems.
- I like Sony AF but not enough to switch systems since most are capable nowadays.
- A notable exception would be a significant feature upgrade like Panasonic just implemented by adding phase detect AF. If I were invested in that system that would be huge and would cause me to upgrade immediately. But often times with most systems changes are incremental, not crucial.
- For cameras do both systems have the lenses you need at a price you are able or willing to pay?
- As I often state, I am strictly team whatever floats your boat. For me, my chosen system comes down to two things.
- Lens selection owing to third party participation and length of time on the market.
- Lenses that will not be available for other systems in the foreseeable future like the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8.
- This will not matter to others. And there will be factors that may sway them another way. Which is good. Choice benefits the consumer.
- As I often state, I am strictly team whatever floats your boat. For me, my chosen system comes down to two things.
- For lenses is there a better camera system choice for your purposes?
- Again, personal choice here. I loved the Canon RF STM primes (35mm, 50mm, and 85mm). Bought the RP largely because of them… Twice… I really tried. But I did not make the complete jump to RF because at that time Canon did not have a second body that met my needs at a price point I was willing to pay. That combined with no affordable alternatives for Tamron f/2.8 zoom trio meant that I would not make that jump. Personal choice.
- Do you align with the camera system’s decisions?
- What really put an end to my interest in Canon had little to do with their excellent cameras and lenses, but with Canon’s decision to not allow third party lens manufacturers to participate. They even up ended Rokinon/Samyang products already on the market. Canon is fully within their rights to do this, but I am a huge fan of third party lenses that would rather go elsewhere.
- Nikon has taken a different route in that they are rebranding third party lenses as Nikon lenses and charging a higher price for them. Better. But I would rather get the same lenses for less elsewhere.
So direct this bit of kit vs. that bit of kit comparisons in isolation do not tell the full story. And others with differing priorities will be led to go in another direction. Which is good as I stated earlier. Competition improves all brands and will often keep prices in check.
This is the best x, y, z ever.
Today perhaps.
Give the gear churn obsessed market a week or month or so before another brand steps all over those specs being heralded today. Wait long enough and the same brand will render its own prior releases obsolete.
My Mom had it right years ago. Specifically regarding cars. My Dad and I were car nuts when I was a kid. We would track all of the new specs comparing the latest promoted improvements in performance and features. When we turned to my Mom for her input she would repeat the same refrain.
“Can I put gas in it and will it take me from point A to point B and back reliably?”
I used to think this was funny. Then Dad and I would return to our car ramblings undeterred. But she was 100% right. A hooptie minivan changed all of this for me. When the kids were little we needed to get a cheap minivan and fast. Found a MAZDA MPV with 100K on the clock that ran well for relative peanuts. A little rough around the edges but decent looking enough. We got 3 car note free years and another 100K out of it. A lady bumped into it on my lunch break one day and I did not care at all. She was very apologetic while looking for any damage.
What about that mark?
Me: My kid did that.
What about that scratch?
Me: It was there when I bought it.
I told her I would take her information if it would make her feel better but she would never hear from me again. I then shrugged, hopped back in it and returned to work. This was a revelation for me. I was one of those obsessive touch up paint and immediate repair guys before. I was now free from all of that and I loved it. I called it my Bic lighter vehicle. I would drive it until it dies and then replace it. In the end a faulty intake repair that predated me did it in. The prior owner used electrical tape to repair a crack in the air intake. Over time the glue dried out, the tape was sucked in, and ruined the inner workings. Could not get the Check Engine light to go out as a result so it would not pass inspection. Investing enough to diagnose and fix it was a gamble we were not willing to make. Would have driven it for many more years if this did not happen. Unfortunate… but I got 3 years and 100,000 miles trouble free miles out of this van including two trips to NYC. We paid around $3,000 for it. I was good. So we donated it to a charity and moved on.
I used to treat cameras as precious while utterly contradicting myself by obsessing about the next shiny thing that came out. That all changed with the Sony A7III. That camera was my MAZDA MPV moment. While praised by many it also caught its share of flack from detractors of the camera and Sony in general. But for years I could dutifully attach a lens to the front of it and it churned out image after image without issue. From my first images after purchase at release in 2018,…
…to every day life,…
…to football games (marching band dad duty),…
…to church services,…
…to art shows,…
…to musical performances,…
to countless parades (marching bad dad duty),…
…to event photography,…
…to portrait photography (NYC, Harlem to be precise.),…
…to my first wedding shoot ever,…
…to my second (as second shooter),…
..and everything in between for over four and a half years. I could still be using it today, and I kind of still am. The Sony A7C I use most is basically a shrunken A7III that allowed me to move on. Plenty of other cameras out there could have done the same. All of this is to say that the latest and greatest is no longer a requirement as far as my use case is concerned. Your mileage may vary.
Advancement whoziwhats will be the end of everything… again.
This is the one I tire of most honestly. Again, if this is your thing you do you. But I have lost count of how many things were going to ruin photography even my relatively short time reading about such things. SO many comment section wars have been waged regarding such. Will not mention any specific scenarios since the looming terror du jour seems to morph regularly.
One of my career specialties for a while was document scanning, archival, indexing, and OCR. Started down this path with Engineering drawings as a GE Power Generation Engineer at the start of my post college career. Then I pivoted to doing the same for NY State tax forms for a consulting firm. Then pivoted to doing so for Merck-Medco working to stand up their first Prescription Fax server in Montvale NJ working with their Dallas, TX processing and data center followed by MetLife working out of their 1 Penn Plaza, NYC ISD Office with their Dayton, OH processing and data center. Worked with a young man from Russia named Marat. Great guy. Full of optimism he once declared to me that digital imaging archival would be the end of paper. His optimism was refreshing considering the horror stories he shared of his time in the Russian military. I shared with him that I doubted it. Many folks out there like doing this, as I held an old timey book in my hands and flipped through the pages. He declared that this did not make any sense. Why carry a book when you could have access to any digital media in your hand instead? I assured him that his question was valid, logically speaking. But if he has learned anything by now it should be that mankind often makes little if any sense.
And I see that books are still doing quite well for themselves while I rarely see anyone carrying readers around anymore.
I look at photography in a similar way. Folks are a quirky bunch. They like playing dress up and capturing images in the “real world”. This may diminish, but I would be very surprised if it ever truly goes away. Technology typically provides a compliment rather than a replacement where artistic endeavors are concerned.
Additionally the world can bring on any number of photography advances. But many will cling to the ways of old. I am exhibit A. With access to a number of digital solutions even including the phone that is always with me you are just as if not more likely to see me wielding a film camera instead. With regard to new technology utterly replacing old I turn to this Mark Twain quote from England after his obituary had been published in the United States:
“The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
Ok, I have now quoted Mike Tyson, my Mom, and now Mark Twain so it may be time to bring it on home.
Again… I am not trying to impede the pursuits of others.
Write that article.
Have the comment section argument.
Camera companies need to shift that gear.
Blog posts need to get that ad dollar.
Variety is the spice of life and all of that.
You do you. Whatever floats your boat.
As I said at the top, I am not their audience is all. And that is ok. Everything need not cater to my whims.
I used to get sucked in myself. While often a harmless way to spend time there can be downsides as well. When I was not careful I got sucked into buying gear I did not need or spending far too much time wishing I had another piece of kit rather than enjoying what I already had.
No longer though. Now I just move on to posts about other photography topics out there. Of which there are plenty. Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 