Cameras and Photography Explained

With one exception, all of the most recently introduced cameras are not available in quantities that allow them to meet demand. Worse still, many slightly-less-recent cameras are in low supply and are drifting in and out of stock. Despite the yen's recent plunge against the dollar, prices aren't going to drop on all these high demand, low supply cameras any time soon, because the camera companies can't make enough of them.

Yet the number two buying season for cameras has just been entered (US Memorial Day kicks off the buying season for summer holidays). I'm getting a lot of "what do I do" questions from people that were anticipating a purchase prior to their upcoming vacations. 

A great deal of the buying angst has to do with bragging rights. My sites have about 1m unique visitors a year, and I'd judge that about 10% of those are "gotta keep up with the Jones's" types, not photographers that have a real need for a new, state-of-the-art model. If I didn't have to "keep up" in order to accurately report what is and isn't possible in photography these days, I'd be perfectly happy with even four- and five-year old cameras. 

While I continue to review the latest-and-greatest offerings—two new cameras and six new lenses sit on my desk at the moment, with several more coming—in terms of my own photography, I'm fairly set now. The Z9 stabilized my Nikon closet, and after paying some attention to exactly which camera(s) and lenses I keep picking up to use, I've taken to cleaning out the majority of gear I owned. 

It really is this simple: if you're not able to take great images with recent cameras and lenses, something's wrong. Yes, I can find marginal differences between my best Canon, Nikon, and Sony gear, but I'm simply not picking up those other items just because of a marginal difference. There's something to be said for mastering a smaller set of really good equipment. 

For instance, just in the Z System, I've now got the choice of 24-70mm f/4, 24-70mm f/2.8, 24-120mm f/4, 24-200mm f/4-6.3, and 28-75mm f/2.8. All of these cover the mid-range in a zoom, and every one of these is a better lens than I was using in the F-mount for the same mid-range work. Do I need all five? No. I'm about to narrow that down to two, though I'm a little torn on which two. (If i were deciding today, it would be the 24-70mm f/2.8 and 24-120mm f/4; but the f/2.8 is only in there for some client work. If it were just me doing personal projects in retirement, it would be the 24-70mm f/4 and maybe the 24-200mm f/4-6.3. Thus, my current indecision.)

Let me try to give you a way of thinking about photography gear today: stop sampling and wasting your dollars and instead use your money to purchase the very best you can afford in one system. Don't think that you need every lens in that system. Seriously consider what you would really carry and use regularly, then whittle that down to the very best, too.

In any mirrorless system and one DSLR system available today, I can identify a truly great all-around camera and a very modest quiver of lenses that would do everything I need to do photographically. For example, here is my great all-around camera list at the moment (the X-H2s is provisional):

• Canon RF — R5 body 
• Fujifilm RF — X-H2s
• Fujifilm GF — GFX100s
• Nikon DSLR — D850
• Nikon Z — Z9
• Sony Alpha — A1

Tell me a type of photography you can't do well with any of those cameras. There really isn't one (though, yes, some are better at certain niches than others, and the GFX100s leans heavily in one direction). 

I'll leave the lens choices to you to figure out, but if you start stacking more than four lenses in your kit, I'm going to start tut-tutting you. First, you can't really carry more than two or three at one time, and second it's clear that you've gone down the rabbit hole of chasing marginal returns. (Okay, I just did the test for myself: I determined that there are five lenses I need in my Z kit. But that's because I do a huge range of photography. I don't actually carry five lenses with me at any given time; more typically three or fewer.)

I'm making a wager, though, that most of you reading this don't have just one camera and four lenses. One of yesterday's emails was from someone that had five cameras and almost two dozen lenses. Talk about "focus." 

Of course, it's your hobby (or profession) and you're free to do what you'd like. But maxing out your credit card to try out the latest and greatest probably isn't advancing your photography very fast, is it? What advances your photography fastest is instruction and practice. I take it as a personal point of pride that everyone that comes to one of my workshops leaves a better photographer (and post processor) no matter what camera, lens, and software they came with. (Which reminds me, there's one opening in my November two-week Galapagos workshop available.)

So, are you guilty of stocking too much gear? I'll bet your are. I can tell you that most of the people I work with who have oodles of equipment available to them start their photographic day confused about which bits they should be carrying and using. It should be crystal clear, not confusing. I spent the last two weeks recently in Botswana with just one camera and one lens. One. Not confusing at all ;~). And I don't believe my photography didn't suffer at all. If anything, it got better during that period as I learned every nuance of getting the best I could from that camera/lens combo.

Which brings me to this: yes, this is the time of year when we're getting new camera and lens announcements and many of you are buying new gear in anticipation of upcoming vacations and holidays. Before you do that, I suggest you go all Konmari on your gear: find the unnecessary things and send them to new homes where they can be loved.

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As with many of my articles, I wrote this one several weeks ago, then edited it earlier this week for posting. By coincidence, Mike Johnston over at The Online Photographer just happened to throw a lot of darts at a similar target this week, though from a different angle. Read this, then especially this.