When is enough enough?

[JDC1958]

There's umpteen-thousand or so that have had such revelations before you had yours. Every one of us has to reach their own determination in this regard, in their own time.

 

[bjn70]

if you want to see real money get wasted for no good reason, take a look at what guys spend on fast cars.

Well cars are a lot of fun to some people but yes they are one of the four most expensive hobbies.

The other three- boats, airplanes and horses.

Compared to these 4 hobbies, photography is nothing.

 

[SpiltMilk]

There's umpteen-thousand or so that have had such revelations before you had yours. Every one of us has to reach their own determination in this regard, in their own time.

--
...Bob, NYC
.
"Well, sometimes the magic works. . . Sometimes, it doesn't." - Chief Dan George, Little Big Man
.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobtullis/
http://www.bobtullis.com
.

When YOU decide.

Exactly.

Only you can decide on what you do - if you can afford it, buy everything you want.
If you can't afford it... buy what you can afford.

My only issue with this - and it's still none of my business - is the "buying without affording". If you are £30 000 in credit card debt to afford your gear... maybe a rethink is needed.

But it's still your choice.

I agree with you both it's down to the individual.

However when I think back to when I started getting into photography I remember being told "get an FM2 and a 50mm or something like that, if you can't get great shots with that then you can only blame yourself".

Yes - some people don't have the self-control to not be "a follower".
And peer pressure is an issue, for sure.

Now times change but what happened, we have better equipment than ever but we want constantly for the latest and greatest.

SOME of us do. some of us just enjoy what we already have.

And some of us get the latest and greatest by actual choice (better usable features) rather than the "upgrade or you are second class" concept.

We had a sad little advert on TV here - haven't seen it for a while, it might have got them bad publicity.

Voice-over on picture of guy wandering lonely places: "do you friends laugh at how slow you smartphone is now"...

To go on with the spiel about buying a new phone and they take your old one, you then have to pay BOTH contracts out with the sale (likely a pathetic value) of the old phone used to help pay off the contract.

In essence, you will NEVER be out of debt, and one that will likely be increasing every year as you sucker-fall for the "is your old phone slow and clunky" rubbish.

I still have a Nokia from 2006 - works fine, no smart features (thankfully!!), battery OK-ish, getting a little tired. Why upgrade when ti does what I want it to do?

--
Stuart...
https://500px.com/stujomo
http://sjmphotography.carbonmade.com/

 

[Kodakrevisited]

We get many and ask many questions about purchasing new gear. Often the OP or we are looking for advise on new gear as a way to improve our photographs.

With the gear available today often the current gear we are using is capable of producing world class results and certainly world class results have been obtained with much less capable gear.

Are we too eager to upgrade or recommend upgrades when we should really looking within an asking what is the real problem with our photographs.

Well given that I shoot all my personal shots at 12MP Jpeg Basic, I think enough is enough, the only thing I welcome is the improved sensitivity at higher ISOs of recent sensors, but I think they are now as good as I will ever need

--r
Freelance Automobile Photographe