We're off on a tangent today.
Since we're stuck in the middle of marketing messages and the hyper-amplified wants that get driven by those, we need to be more pragmatic. Things aren't quite as simple as "you only need 12mp" as I might have implied last week.
Most of you reading this site aren't casual photographers. You're serious. Photography for you is either your primary hobby or perhaps even your personal aspiration. I've been there. During most of my high tech career, photography was secondary to my vocation. That didn't mean that I ignored photography, only that I had to temper the time, energy, and money I put into creating images.
One of the things I learned during that period is this: buy the best you can afford. This is related to the "needs/wants" discussion last week. You have to be careful not to buy the best you want, but rather buy the best you need.
Underbuying something (say a top-of-the-line compact when your needs are really in the DSLR realm) just postpones the inevitable and costs you more money and time in the long run. You get frustrated with the compact and replace it with a low-end DSLR. You get frustrated with that and replace it with a high-end DSLR. You end up buying three cameras instead of one. Meantime, you spent lots of time and energy researching products, not taking pictures.
Same is true of lenses. You might buy a third party consumer zoom, then a better consumer zoom, then a pro zoom. Three lenses instead of one, and all that goes with that.
Same is true of support. You buy a cheap tripod, then a better one, then a carbon fiber one with a great head. Three tripods instead of one. But you've already read my article on that ;~).
I could go on ;~). Worse, some of you don't stop at just three. I've seen people consume six, seven, or more choices before they reach what they should have gotten in the first place. It wastes money because you end up spending thousands more to get to the same place. It wastes time because you are constantly researching and learning new equipment rather than photographing. It wastes energy because you're constantly shopping. It helps banks get bigger because you're triggering a lot of fees for them along the way (even if it's only the credit card transaction fees that the seller pays).
I see some variant of this issue in all the "I want Nikon to come out with a..." discussions on the net (including the ones I've contributed to. ;~(. The implication in most of those statements is that they won't buy today's best (e.g. a D700) because there will be a better best tomorrow (e.g. a D700s, D800, or D900). That's likely to always be true, though, so taken to the logical extreme, you'd never buy anything.
Here's the way you have to approach things: I need X, and Y is the best X available to me. Example: "I need a good low-light, professional body camera that can print to the max of a desktop inkjet and use my existing film lenses. Today, that's a D700, so that's what I'll buy." Simple. Just requires that you know what you need and evaluate what's available to determine what the best is that fits that.
People get distracted from that in three ways:
- The future. The future will always have a better house, car, camera, TV, dishwasher, phone, and everything else you can think of. The future will always have new features or quality. The future will offer you more options. The future might even bring less expensive things that do everything you need and more. But you can't buy the future. You also can't really predict the future with enough certainty to make rational decisions about it. The future has a tendency to slip ship dates and underperform its promises ;~).
- Knowledge. Figuring out what the best is isn't always quite so simple. We're talking about complex products. They aren't perfect, and there are small variations in many areas that can become distractions to the bigger picture. For example, the D90 and D5000 technically produce a slightly cleaner image than the D300 and D300s in my testing (emphasis on slightly). Does that make them better cameras? No. The D300s, on analysis, has more features, better build, more options, and allows more control than the D90. Should you buy a D90 or D300s? A D300s, if you can and you need any of the things it adds. The slight difference in pixel quality is so minimal to be insignificant in practice. The other differences are big enough to be significant in practice to many.
- Self-assessment. We're back to that "need" thing again. A lot of people lie to themselves about what they really need. They get caught up in status or keeping up with the Joneses or something other than a true photographic need. Hey, if it makes you happy to buy a D3x--arguably the best DSLR made--go ahead and get it, but you you may be a long ways from being practical. Don't blame me if you don't end up with what you need.
Note that there is a caveat in the headline: "...that you can afford." All of us have constraints. As much as you might think I have everything Nikon has ever made, I don't. You'll note that I have regular sales of gear. I keep only that which I really need. And if someone told me that I wouldn't have to write books or maintain this site tomorrow, but take only pictures, the gear closet would probably drop in half from its current modest proportions.
Normally I try to avoid using the word "investment" around photography gear. Too many people take that to mean "retains value for resale." A few things--mostly the big exotic lenses--do tend to retain a good portion of their value for a longer period of time, but you're not investing in equipment for monetary gain, you're investing in it for photographic gain. Buying a top-of-the-line tripod and head, for instance, costs a lot of money. But it also completely removes a problem from all your future photographic excursions. That's a photographic gain. Choose right and you buy one expensive set of legs and head once and only once. Yes, that may cost you US$1000 you don't have today. But it's an investment in your photographic capabilities that probably won't have to be remade. You're not spending US$200 every few months to try something else (and wasting time and energy doing the long comb through the possibilities of such products).
But to "invest" like this, you need to know what you're really trying to accomplish. If that is "take the best possible photos and become proud of my photographs," great. If it's "get some snaps of my kids on vacations as they grow up," well, maybe you don't need a tripod, at all.
One issue that last bit raises is "justification confusion." You see, what you really want is equipment (and time) that allows you to pursue your aspiration: great photography. What most of you do to justify the money you spend is promise things like "I'll be able to take better vacation pictures for the scrapbook" to your spouse. Somewhere in that justification almost always comes compromise. Your spouse isn't going to let you buy a US$7999 D3x to take better vacation pictures because that doesn't make any sense at all, but they might let you spend US$1499 on a D300s. So you settle.
Let's face it, hobbies are expensive. In order of expense: retirement, children, house, hobby. Not much else comes close if you were to honestly add up all the numbers. It doesn't matter if you're into boating, photography, model planes, sports memorabilia, or whatever--you're going to spend a lot of money on your hobby over time. The best way to deal with this is to let each spouse have free reign of choices for their hobby, but with an agreed upon budget each year. If you know that you've only got US$3000 to spend on your hobby each year, you can save for three years and buy a D3x, save for two years and buy a used D3x, or you can buy a D700 today. Simple as that. Still need 24mp? ;~)
But when you take that approach, note that things turn very rapidly a different direction. You're no longer really worried about pixels or noise levels or feature X. You start thinking about what is really useful to you right now, what the best of that is, and whether it fits in your budget this year. I'd argue further that on that fixed US$3000 budget, you'll rapidly discover that bodies, lenses, software, and training all have different paybacks to your enjoyment of the hobby. Spend that money wisely and your hobby gives you great joy. Spend that money pursuing the wrong gains and you'll grow frustrated and start posting fanboy rants on Internet sites ;~).
And that's how I get to: buy the best that you can afford. The best of what you've verified is the most important thing you need. Since you're on a limited budget, this forces you to prioritize what you need. That gives you a simple "buy" sheet:
Priority One Cost X
Priority Two Cost Y
Priority Three Cost Z...
Buy the best you can afford of the top priority things that fit within this year's budget. Next year, make a new budget and refresh your list of priorities. Funny thing is, you'll see some of your priorities change price each year, usually downward (but not that 600mm lens ;~). That means that time alone may solve some of your perceived problem.
Meanwhile, spend the majority of your effort on photographing. After all, without doing a lot of photography, how are you going to even know how to prioritize what you need?
Photograph.
Prioritize need.
Budget.
Buy the best you can afford of what you need.
Repeat.
That's the manual for serious photographers in a nutshell. Heck, that'll even fit on an iPhone display.