Canon 35mm f/2 IS vs Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art bokeh comparison

I completely agree with most of your post too. There's a lot of "keeping up with the Jones's" going on in the photography world. Many people with cameras and lenses feel that they constantly need to upgrade because "this lens is so much sharper" or "this camera has twice the amount of pixels" or whatever. But if they honestly looked at their photos that they take - pictures of the kids, their cat and random pictures of trees taken from their doorstep, and all of them posted no where else but FaceBook at SVGA resolution - they'd realise that the only lens they really need is the kit lens. I'd say that was true of a vast majority of "photographers".

I was at Jessops once (so it was a few years ago) buying a camera bag for my son. I was having a good discussion with one of the clerks about the 70-200 f/2.8 II and one of the other customers overheard me. When I'd finished buying my bag he came up to me and asked for some advice. He had in his hand a Nikon D70 with the kit lens and came into Jessops to see what price they'd give him for a D800 as a trade-in and what did I think about that. I asked him what his motivations were for this and he said that he just didn't feel that the pictures of his kids were "professional" looking.

I asked him if he knew about depth of field, apertures, shutter speed, composition, lighting etc - the usual stuff - to which he said, "um, no, I let the camera do all that".

After giving him a few tips for better photos I suggested that he'd be better off going to the book shop and investing in a few good learning photography books, then, after applying his craft for a while and if then finding weaknesses in his kit, to invest in a better lens, not a better body, but only then - only when his technical ability surpassed his existing kit's capability of realising his creative vision. As an example, I said that if he got into landscape photography he may find that the widest range of his lens wasn't wide enough for some of the compositions he had in his mind, or that the distortion in his lens was too extreme at the wide range that it caused problems in post, but only through actually using his kit and knowledge of how to use it would he know this.

To my amazement he actually took my advice, thanked me and left the shop. I had thought it would fall on deaf ears and that he'd still leave the shop with a D800, so I was pleasantly surprised that he didn't - at least on that day.

I wonder how many people on this forum just buy camera equipment to shoot technical tests and keep the lenses in their bags, happy in the knowledge that they "have the best lens" - until the next one comes out - but don't ever really use them even close to their ability.

Hmm. I wonder.

Lenses are tools. Camera bodies are tools. A blunt knife is just as good as a sharp knife if it's kept in the drawer...

As to the comment about hobbyist vs professionals, I'm afraid I don't agree with your statement here. A professional, by definition means that they earn money from their photography - it's their profession - but there are many, many talented individuals who don't earn money from photography (hence, they are not "professionals") but have absolutely stunning photographs. Equally, there are some pretty dire professionals out there churning out less than spectacular photos, to say the least - especially in the wedding photography market.

The hobbyist vs professional is no indication of how much demands they put on their kit, or how well they use it to their ability.