Does the gear matters?
I’ve seen lately a few post here on Substack mentioning the fact that in photography gear is not important, important is taking the photo and enjoying the process instead of praising the tool. On top of that, few of the photographers that appeared on “The Sunday interview” mentioned how they stopped looking for the latest gear on the market. Also, in some of my post I mentioned that I am a strong believer that camera is not important, important is what you do with it.
So is the gear important? No, the gear is not important. I agree with most of photographers that making the most of what you have in your hand it is more important than crying that you don’t have that camera or that lens.
So is the gear important? Of course it is. If you are a professional photographer or specialised on a certain type of photography, the gear is very important. Now, it is not important to have the latest gear, fair play to you if you can afford it, but it is important to have the right gear for the job, reliable gear that you can trust and you are very familiar with. Personally I wouldn’t go to a rugby match without a camera with lots of frames per second and a fast lens.
Do you think that Michela Griffith will go out without a reliable tripod? Do you think Xavi Buendia will go to a job with any lens? Things can go that far that somebody like Charlie Borland will go to inspect the place of next assignment way before, just to know what gear to bring with him. Why? Because the experience over the years thought him that you can’t do a job without proper gear and gear is important. So yeah, the gear is important.
Very good points made here! Indeed for professionals, the choice of gear is essential to delivering the job. We need reliability first, and the best tools we can get to help us do our job. It's not a matter of bluffing or impressing people, they're our tools. Hobbyists find this difficult to understand.
Media does a really bad job convincing uneducated hobbyist that gear matters. It doesn't! It's the process.
Interesting post.
I have definitely found myself in situations where I wish I’d taken a certain lens (long for nature, wider for inclusive architecture, better quality/faster for night sky shots, macro for insects and tiny details, etc) and I have definitely had the experiences when I wish I had my “camera-camera” with instead of just my iPhone (which is not one of the high-end ones).
And don’t get me started on those who still are of the mind that iPhones, these days with the high cost of and definite effort that’s gone into the development of the high-end’s camera features, are not photography gear.
I guess it’s always true that one can take poor shots with great gear as well as great shots with poor gear. But, to some extent or another, gear does matter. 😃