John's Photographic Ramblings

John's Photographic Ramblings

Saturday 26 September 2015

26 September 2015

Equipment quality


This article is about psychology and how it affects our individual approaches to photography.

There are two basic approaches to equipment:

needing equipment that is good enough to achieve what I want to do.

must have the best equipment I can afford.

My own approach is the first. My equipment – both film and digital – is of good amateur quality. I actually own professional film cameras but seldom use them, - they are big, heavy and complicated. For film use I like my German rangefinders or 1960s SLRs – not too heavy, not so big and very few controls. My digital camera – Canon 650D – is a strictly amateur camera. All produce images I can print at A3 size.

I have had many discussions with other photographers – usually around digital kit but in the past about film kit. When I started out in photography something over forty years ago, it was made clear to me that my Soviet Zenit E with a Helios-44 lens was rubbish. Now it transpires that the Helios-44 lens in one of the best lenses ever and I had better kit than anyone knew.

With digital, I am told I should have a full frame camera as the quality is so much better and I should use Canon L series lenses as they are so much shaper.  That is a camera plus lens costing £3,000 or more compared to the £800 for the kit I use most. To me, it seems I should ask what I am doing with the camera and how I am displaying the images. This last seems to me to be the most important. Pictures displayed on a computer screen are about 2 megapixels. If that is how you view your pictures, full frame and top range lenses are completely wasted.  In fact, even mid-range cameras are more than you need. Printing up to A4 and any DSLR – even with an ASP-C sensor – with a mid-range lens will do you proud.