I Stopped Watching Camera Gear Reviews and Became a Better Photographer
It’s a bit of a sad reality that camera gear reviews dominate so much of the online space of photography. “Photographers”, obsessed with the latest and greatest continue to talk about the gear like it will change everything - we know it wont.
And I know, this may come off as a bit ironic - because I make camera reviews myself! But I try to keep them as experience based as possible and less about the technicalities that really don’t matter. As a matter of fact, I do indeed talk about photography and creativity beyond the cameras themselves - you probably just don’t watch those videos.
So I get it. It gets views, it gets clicks - you do what you gotta do. I’m just here to share a few thoughts from my journey about become a “better” artist, and the few beliefs I personally had to break to get to this next step.
Most Technicalities DON’T Matter for Photography
Much of these will sound like trite observations, but it’s true. I’m guilty of the shiny object syndrome myself. Looking and seeing a new or unique camera and imagining how great our lives will be once we get it and then realizing that not much has changed and you spent a ton of money on a brick is an age long old trap.
And yet we still fall for it.
I believe in the constant reminder of telling ourselves “we don’t need it.”
Chances are, you’ll know whether or not a technical upgrade matters for your work. These are the guys in the field, studio, or whatever doing these things everyday. But if you’re anything like me, and just take photos for yourself - you probably don’t need it.
“Is this necessary?” “Is this essential?”
Ask yourself both questions and you’ll probably get a no.
At least for me, I try to keep the focus narrow. Meaning the only thing that matters is taking pictures.
I try to keep things as simple as possible since I believe that doing so will allow use to say “no” more and more to all of these shiny new toys. It’ll allow us to focus on the important things in photography, which is photography itself.
A New Camera WON’T Make You A Better Photographer
“If you’re a good photographer, then you can take good photos - regardless of the camera you have” - some guy on youtube.
This is another obvious sounding one because I’ve tricked myself before. I subconsciously believed in the fantasy of new gear, and how my life would be so great after I got this new camera. And then it comes in the mail, I end up rarely using it, and it’s now a glorified dust collector. We dream up a life after having the camera until we realize not much changes after.
If we had instead focused on improving aspects of our photography instead of upgrading our gear, imagine how good we’d be.
We know this to be true, especially across all spectrums of creativity.
There are good photographers that shoot on film. There are good photographers that shoot fuji, canon, nikon - whatever.
The gear you use doesn’t matter. It’s wasted time and energy to focus on it when we could simply be getting better.
The Best Way to Learn About a Camera/Lens is to USE it Ourselves
After buying a camera and using it for a while, we learn much much more about the body or lens than from listening to someone talk about it. Chances are, our use case scenario is quite specific to ourselves so we don’t realize whether something works for us until we spend some time with it.
So this may mean renting the gear, or using the return policy, or whatever. But spending time imagining whether or not something fits in your life is actually more of a waste of time than just trying it out. Find a camera store near you where you can fiddle with the lens or something.
Time spent listening to all of these gear reviews to try and “save some money” by getting some sort of new insight on a camera only to find out something new about the lens that you didn’t expect results in wasted time.
If I want to know more about a camera, I’ll read the spec sheet.
