The "gear does/doesn't matter" argument

SK_photography said:

A recent thread about photography got a bit sidetracked by a debate about gear and formats. I've seen a few versions of the same argument on these forums. People seem to argue about extreme position, which both seem nonsensical to me:

1. Equipment doesn't make any difference at all, or

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Its not that equipment doesn't matter at all, it is that the contribution of equipment to what makes a great photograph great is small in comparison to subject and composition.

Equipment does matter to the extent you need some to produce a photograph, but the bar for what is usable is quite low.

Member said:

1. You need an expensive camera to take a good photo,

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Perhaps we should say that a versatile camera can make it easier to produce a good photo. Versatility often comes with expense, but is not directly linked.

Member said:

It seems obvious that there are some photographs that could only have been taken with very specialist equipment, while at the same time there are many famous, classic photos that were taken with very simple, basic cameras.

A good example might be Stephen Shore, who has had one very famous photographic exhibition (American Surfaces) taken with a simple 35 mm compact, and another equally famous work (Uncommon Places) taken mostly using an 8x10 view camera. You can't say that he didn't care about gear, because he used the equipment he needed to get the results that he wanted. At the same time, he knew how to take great photos with a basic camera.

So I'm never quite sure what the argument is about - or do people just like arguing for its own sake?

S.

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J A C S said:

SK_photography said:

A recent thread about photography got a bit sidetracked by a debate about gear and formats. I've seen a few versions of the same argument on these forums. People seem to argue about extreme position, which both seem nonsensical to me:

1. Equipment doesn't make any difference at all, or
2. You need an expensive camera to take a good photo,

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I have never seen anybody arguing (2).

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Exactly spot on but it doesn't matter.

It needs to be "true" for all the trite platitudes and preaching to remain relevant, and, subsequently, the few posters who have a seemingly clinical compulsion to constantly repeat them.

Look at the trending topics over focus. "A photo must be in focus to be good," said no one ever even once ever, yet still the guffaw over the non issue. Lots of non-issue issues around here. Peculiar, no?

Flavil said:

J A C S said:

SK_photography said:

A recent thread about photography got a bit sidetracked by a debate about gear and formats. I've seen a few versions of the same argument on these forums. People seem to argue about extreme position, which both seem nonsensical to me:

1. Equipment doesn't make any difference at all, or
2. You need an expensive camera to take a good photo,

Click to expand...

I have never seen anybody arguing (2).

Click to expand...

Exactly spot on but it doesn't matter.

It needs to be "true" for all the trite platitudes and preaching to remain relevant, and, subsequently, the few posters who have a seemingly clinical compulsion to constantly repeat them.

Look at the trending topics over focus. "A photo must be in focus to be good," said no one ever even once ever, yet still the guffaw over the non issue. Lots of non-issue issues around here. Peculiar, no?

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?

justmeMN said:

justmeMN said:

SK_photography wrote:...or do people just like arguing for its own sake?

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I thought that was the purpose of the internet.

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I think that was Sir Tim's mission statement. "To boldly argue in more places than any man has before"

tony field said:

As long as your subject material is appropriate for the shooting envelope of the camera and lenses you are using, equipment doesn't really matter. Just don't try to shoot birds in flight from 40 M away with your Leica rangefinder and 50 millimetre lens.

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I dunno, pretty much guaranteed to get them in shot...

Bob Janes said:

SK_photography said:

A recent thread about photography got a bit sidetracked by a debate about gear and formats. I've seen a few versions of the same argument on these forums. People seem to argue about extreme position, which both seem nonsensical to me:

1. Equipment doesn't make any difference at all, or

Click to expand...

Its not that equipment doesn't matter at all, it is that the contribution of equipment to what makes a great photograph great is small in comparison to subject and composition.

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And lighting and how to translate between what one sees and how the camera will present it. But, yes, understanding photography is far more important to making a good image than buying better kit.

But that takes more work and is less easy to argue about

Bob Janes said:

Equipment does matter to the extent you need some to produce a photograph, but the bar for what is usable is quite low.

Bob Janes said:

1. You need an expensive camera to take a good photo,

Click to expand...

Perhaps we should say that a versatile camera can make it easier to produce a good photo. Versatility often comes with expense, but is not directly linked.

Bob Janes said:

It seems obvious that there are some photographs that could only have been taken with very specialist equipment, while at the same time there are many famous, classic photos that were taken with very simple, basic cameras.

A good example might be Stephen Shore, who has had one very famous photographic exhibition (American Surfaces) taken with a simple 35 mm compact, and another equally famous work (Uncommon Places) taken mostly using an 8x10 view camera. You can't say that he didn't care about gear, because he used the equipment he needed to get the results that he wanted. At the same time, he knew how to take great photos with a basic camera.

So I'm never quite sure what the argument is about - or do people just like arguing for its own sake?

S.

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SK_photography said:

So I'm never quite sure what the argument is about - or do people just like arguing for its own sake?

S.

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NR

bastibe said:

I think Mark Scott Abeln summed it up nicely.

That said, I would add that better gear makes photography easier for beginners. On my APS-C body I need to watch my highlights much less closely than on my 1-inch compact. Autofocus of newer gear is more reliable, leading to fewer misfocused shots. Newer stabilization systems are generally better as well.

Thus, I am of the perhaps somewhat controversial opinion that *for new photographers*, a somewhat big-sensor, new-ish camera is probably better than an older, more basic kit. In other words, gear does matter.

This becomes less true with more experience, though. A seasoned photographer can often easily compensate for limitations of gear (within reason), and other factors become more important.

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I will qualify that good easy to use gear makes it easier for a novice. The gear actually is a problem the better it gets as there is a degree of complication. A simple fixed camera is all you need to learn composition and in modern terms a good full auto camera does the same.

Ad to many options and it becomes a mess.

Gear can make things easier ..

I find it much easier with my current gear to make particular photos which would have been very hard to make with the gear I first had.

My camera is pretty good now, and I have some excellent lenses. And I do believe it is all about the glass. Great lenses make great pictures, everything else being equal.

So I would argue, gear can matter.

Mark_A

Mark_A said:

Gear can make things easier ..

I find it much easier with my current gear to make particular photos which would have been very hard to make with the gear I first had.

My camera is pretty good now, and I have some excellent lenses. And I do believe it is all about the glass. Great lenses make great pictures, everything else being equal.

So I would argue, gear can matter.

Mark_A

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Gear can matter, I don't think there is a real debate that it cannot. The question is how much and that is often less than gear proponents posit.

Mark_A said:

Gear can make things easier ..

I find it much easier with my current gear to make particular photos which would have been very hard to make with the gear I first had.

My camera is pretty good now, and I have some excellent lenses. And I do believe it is all about the glass. Great lenses make great pictures, everything else being equal.

So I would argue, gear can matter.

Mark_A

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apparently it's all about talent not gear.





I feel sorry for all those guys falling for the "gear matters" mantra.

If you look really hard , you might just spot one with his Zenit EM and a pre-set 300mm f/5.6.

I bet he gets published.

lilBuddha said:

Mark_A said:

Gear can make things easier ..

I find it much easier with my current gear to make particular photos which would have been very hard to make with the gear I first had.

My camera is pretty good now, and I have some excellent lenses. And I do believe it is all about the glass. Great lenses make great pictures, everything else being equal.

So I would argue, gear can matter.

Mark_A

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Gear can matter, I don't think there is a real debate that it cannot. The question is how much and that is often less than gear proponents posit.

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This is a very general statement. Matters for what?

For non-staged shots when I walk outside in the evening with my family? My F/1.4-1.2 lenses matter because I like my photos with low noise and with blurred city lights (makes the light not so harsh). It is almost tautological, yes, but it is what it is.

For wildlife? Phones are not good.

Event photography? Hard to see somebody not using 24-70/2.8 or 70-200/2.8 or so.

Staged portraits with expensive "pro" lighting and backdrops on cruise ships? What I observed was older crop cameras with generic lenses. Cannot blame them. Their photos were bad, BTW but not because of the gear.

Street photography? A lot of variation is possible. We have iconic examples of grainy photos taken with pocketable film Leica's.

Landscapes? Whatever rock your boat. AA was using LF, and he did have a 35mm camera. Billions of people shoot with phones.

SK_photography said:

A recent thread about photography got a bit sidetracked by a debate about gear and formats. I've seen a few versions of the same argument on these forums. People seem to argue about extreme position, which both seem nonsensical to me:

1. Equipment doesn't make any difference at all, or
2. You need an expensive camera to take a good photo,

It seems obvious that there are some photographs that could only have been taken with very specialist equipment, while at the same time there are many famous, classic photos that were taken with very simple, basic cameras.

A good example might be Stephen Shore, who has had one very famous photographic exhibition (American Surfaces) taken with a simple 35 mm compact, and another equally famous work (Uncommon Places) taken mostly using an 8x10 view camera. You can't say that he didn't care about gear, because he used the equipment he needed to get the results that he wanted. At the same time, he knew how to take great photos with a basic camera.

So I'm never quite sure what the argument is about - or do people just like arguing for its own sake?

S.

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Of course it matters, I don't know how anyone can argue against "equipment matters".

Some shot's are impossible to get without the correct gear.

Some shots are ruined because the gear was inappropriate.

When I was young I shot with a kodak instamatic, fixed focal length, fixed aperture, fixed shutter speed. I was gifted a 35mm Russian film camera with a 50mm F/2.0. As soon as I had my first roll of film developed I realised that gear matters.

Then there's the argument that xxx(insert famous photographer here) only shot with a leica rangefinder with 35mm lens(or other such limited gear) and got great shots. They say this without irony when that famous photographer would have used a kodak brownie and saved themselves a shed load of money... if gear didn't matter.

No professionals I know think the gear doesn't matter, quite the opposite, it's the tools of their trade, it matters more than anything, without the correct tool they're not going to be able to earn a living, they own lenses that only get used once a year but without which they couldn't do a particular job. Some own seven or eight different bodies which are used situationally, the list goes on, gear matters.

Then there's the 'such and such' a camera is good enough brigade, when good enough is a purely personal thing, some are happy with slightly OOF images with blown highlights, some are only happy with tack sharp.

Image quality is a constantly moving target, it has been from the dawn of photography, the one constant is it's always been on an upward trajectory, it's never reached a point where everyone has said, 'right, that's it, never going to get better than this' and probably never will, people used to argue over what was the best film stock just as they now argue over the best sensors.

Toronto Photography said:

I will qualify that good easy to use gear makes it easier for a novice. The gear actually is a problem the better it gets as there is a degree of complication. A simple fixed camera is all you need to learn composition and in modern terms a good full auto camera does the same.

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Yeah, I went from a D40, which was easy to use, to a D200, which was not. But eventually I learned that not all the functions were useful to me.

SK_photography said:

A recent thread about photography got a bit sidetracked by a debate about gear and formats. I've seen a few versions of the same argument on these forums. People seem to argue about extreme position, which both seem nonsensical to me:

1. Equipment doesn't make any difference at all, or
2. You need an expensive camera to take a good photo,

It seems obvious that there are some photographs that could only have been taken with very specialist equipment, while at the same time there are many famous, classic photos that were taken with very simple, basic cameras.

A good example might be Stephen Shore, who has had one very famous photographic exhibition (American Surfaces) taken with a simple 35 mm compact, and another equally famous work (Uncommon Places) taken mostly using an 8x10 view camera. You can't say that he didn't care about gear, because he used the equipment he needed to get the results that he wanted. At the same time, he knew how to take great photos with a basic camera.

So I'm never quite sure what the argument is about - or do people just like arguing for its own sake?

S.

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.. money well spent can also mean 'money not wasted'.

ant

Tuonov2 said:

[...]

Then there's the argument that xxx(insert famous photographer here) only shot with a leica rangefinder with 35mm lens(or other such limited gear) and got great shots. They say this without irony when that famous photographer would have used a kodak brownie and saved themselves a shed load of money... if gear didn't matter.

[...]

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The curious thing is that Bert Hardy (a photojournalist and documentary photographer I admire greatly) whose work featured in Edward Steichen's famous Family of Man exhibition, mostly used Leica, Contax, and Rolleiflex cameras, and yet possibly his most famous photo, now considered an iconic image of post-war Britain, was taken with a Kodak Brownie!

Although it was taken 70 years ago, people are still talking about that image, made with one of the simplest cameras you can imagine.

It goes to the point that, of course, no professional photojournalist would set out on an important assignment with only a cheap P&S camera. But a great photographer doesn't need much to create a great photo.

So the question, "Does gear matter?" is IMO a surprisingly subtle one. If you are prepared to approach it without preconceptions, you can learn quite a lot in thinking about the answer.

S.

SK_photography said:

Tuonov2 said:

[...]

Then there's the argument that xxx(insert famous photographer here) only shot with a leica rangefinder with 35mm lens(or other such limited gear) and got great shots. They say this without irony when that famous photographer would have used a kodak brownie and saved themselves a shed load of money... if gear didn't matter.

[...]

Click to expand...

The curious thing is that Bert Hardy (a photojournalist and documentary photographer I admire greatly) whose work featured in Edward Steichen's famous Family of Man exhibition, mostly used Leica, Contax, and Rolleiflex cameras, and yet possibly his most famous photo, now considered an iconic image of post-war Britain, was taken with a Kodak Brownie!

Although it was taken 70 years ago, people are still talking about that image, made with one of the simplest cameras you can imagine.

It goes to the point that, of course, no professional photojournalist would set out on an important assignment with only a cheap P&S camera. But a great photographer doesn't need much to create a great photo.

So the question, "Does gear matter?" is IMO a surprisingly subtle one. If you are prepared to approach it without preconceptions,

Click to expand...

This is not how the human mind works by default. Doing so takes awareness and attention.

Member said:

you can learn quite a lot in thinking about the answer.

S.

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SK_photography said:

A recent thread about photography got a bit sidetracked by a debate about gear and formats. I've seen a few versions of the same argument on these forums. People seem to argue about extreme position, which both seem nonsensical to me:

1. Equipment doesn't make any difference at all, or
2. You need an expensive camera to take a good photo,

It seems obvious that there are some photographs that could only have been taken with very specialist equipment, while at the same time there are many famous, classic photos that were taken with very simple, basic cameras.

A good example might be Stephen Shore, who has had one very famous photographic exhibition (American Surfaces) taken with a simple 35 mm compact, and another equally famous work (Uncommon Places) taken mostly using an 8x10 view camera. You can't say that he didn't care about gear, because he used the equipment he needed to get the results that he wanted. At the same time, he knew how to take great photos with a basic camera.

So I'm never quite sure what the argument is about - or do people just like arguing for its own sake?

S.

Click to expand...

You nailed it.

If the question is structured so there is no right or wrong answer because the question is so vague any response is meaningless, folks can yammer on and on.

If I ask, does gear matter when shooting Olympic downhill for a client who requires absolute focus accuracy and high resolution then yes gear matters. Obviously. Which is not the same as top shelf gear is inherently better in all circumstances than next best or even a Pentax67 loaded with 100 ASA film.

--

dw

FrancoD said:

Mark_A said:

Gear can make things easier ..

I find it much easier with my current gear to make particular photos which would have been very hard to make with the gear I first had.

My camera is pretty good now, and I have some excellent lenses. And I do believe it is all about the glass. Great lenses make great pictures, everything else being equal.

So I would argue, gear can matter.

Mark_A

Click to expand...

apparently it's all about talent not gear.



I feel sorry for all those guys falling for the "gear matters" mantra.

If you look really hard , you might just spot one with his Zenit EM and a pre-set 300mm f/5.6.

I bet he gets published

Click to expand...

Yeah, sports photography, such a creative activity. Spray and pray to the nth power of the scrum. I wonder how many will get the single unique image? Or maybe not "the" single but "a" single unique image?

SK_photography said:

Tuonov2 said:

[...]

Then there's the argument that xxx(insert famous photographer here) only shot with a leica rangefinder with 35mm lens(or other such limited gear) and got great shots. They say this without irony when that famous photographer would have used a kodak brownie and saved themselves a shed load of money... if gear didn't matter.

[...]

Click to expand...

The curious thing is that Bert Hardy (a photojournalist and documentary photographer I admire greatly) whose work featured in Edward Steichen's famous Family of Man exhibition, mostly used Leica, Contax, and Rolleiflex cameras, and yet possibly his most famous photo, now considered an iconic image of post-war Britain, was taken with a Kodak Brownie!

Although it was taken 70 years ago, people are still talking about that image, made with one of the simplest cameras you can imagine.

It goes to the point that, of course, no professional photojournalist would set out on an important assignment with only a cheap P&S camera. But a great photographer doesn't need much to create a great photo.

So the question, "Does gear matter?" is IMO a surprisingly subtle one. If you are prepared to approach it without preconceptions, you can learn quite a lot in thinking about the answer.

S.

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so why did he change from the Box Brownie to Leica , Contax and Rolleiflex ?

Why not an Agfa, a Balda or an Ensign ?

BTW, what was the famous image he took with the Box Brownie ?