Buying Fancy Cameras

Sooner or later it happens to most keen photographers.

"I suppose that my present camera is all right. But one of those geewhizbang models (costing three times what my present camera did) would be so much better. I think I shall mortgage one of the children and go GET one."

Okay - I'll bite ..... WHY will it be so much better?

If said keen photographer is about to embark upon a career in sports action photojournalism or about to head off to some bullet infested world trouble spot or about to work full time in some highly specialised commercial/scientific field of imagemaking there may be some very good reasons INDEED for buying a geewhizzbang.

If you expect a camera to perform faultlessly all day every day for months on end in hot, humid, dusty or icy conditions, bouncing in and out of suitcases etc, high end designated professional bodies and lenses truly make sense. You want the camera to be sealed against undesirable conditions, be able to shoot fast and long. You want back up flash cards on line. You want ultra bright viewfinders. You want bodies that will endure constant heavy use without complaint.

Gear that earns you a good full time living, enabling you to get the paying pics AS and WHEN you need them is worth every dollar you pay for it. End of story. In the digital photography world, if the gear is still functioning reliably (however beat up it looks) after four years, you have done very well. It's time to update to the latest capabilities by then, in any case.

You will notice that most of the camera characteristics, to which I refer, have something to do with physical body toughness, weather sealing, high activation number shutters and backup image file security. About the only actual picture taking function I mentioned was the high fps rate.

Let's return to the everyday REAL world of you and me ... the keen amateur. Aside from the small percentage of us with more time and money than is entirely respectable, we seldom use our cameras for more than a dozen or so frames every couple of days. Several people I know, who describe themselves as enthusiastic amateurs, would be lucky to shoot more than a dozen or more images per WEEK on average.

Do we really NEED the characteristics of the professional kit I describe above. Of course not!

When I have a camera which is four years old, it usually looks and behaves as good as new. Why? It's simple! I DON'T crawl around in middle eastern deserts, dodging stray mortar shells. I DON'T stand for hours at football games with my camera rattling away at 9 fps during every critical play. My life is NOT so hectic that I don't have the time to put my cameras down gently and avoid scrapping them along rock walls. I DON'T have to stand outside some celebrity mansion in the rain, hoping for a glimpse of a movie star having sex with the pool attendant. What is more, very few of YOU do these things either.

The vast majority of shutterbugs do not NEED professional spec cameras. Let me repeat that. Most of us are silly to be spending big bucks on geewhizbang cameras that provide capabilities which will never be required.

"Ah but ...", I hear you say, "... surely the pro gear will give me better images!"

"Ah .... NO", I hear myself reply.

If the truth be known, for almost ALL of us amateurs, for almost ALL of the time, top-of-line, D3 type cameras of this world will provide NO better images than the D90 level cameras (at one fifth the price) which are the practical, sensible units we OUGHT to be using.

I discuss the Nikon range simply because I know it best (not because it necessarily IS better than some other brand). If we shoot an average of (say) 50 images a week, in four years we will probably have shot a total of 10,400 images. I hear some people screaming that they would shoot FIVE TIMES that many. Okay then let's make it 250 images a week, EVERY week. After four years we would have shot 52,000 pictures.

The D90 has a shutter which has been tested to more than 100,000 successful activations. Why do we need a D3?

The D90 has weather sealing not dissimilar to the D3. Why do we need a D3? The hires LCD screen on a D90 is the SAME as that on a D3. Why do we need a D3? At all but absurd ISO levels, observable image quality from a D90 is effectively IDENTICAL to that of a D3. Why do we need one again?

Of course the D3 is bigger and heavier than a D90. Remind me - why is that a GOOD thing? The D3 is full frame while D90 is only DX. There is lots of evidence that unless you use correspondingly better (AND doubly expensive) lenses on a full frame body, your picture quality may actually get WORSE. D3 anyone?

Look. We can go on and on about overweight files being a pain in the neck, soft cuddly rubber grips which inevitably peel off and regiments of fiddly, gimmicky, totally unnecessary features which endure the life of the camera unactivated. One starts to run out of reasons why us shutterbugs will ever NEED a fancy camera beyond something like the D90.

Funds burning a hole in the pocket? Want to spend money on your hobby. Take some advice. Go buy admittance to a very good course about quality post processing. You'll thank yourself for the rest of your photographic life.

Just before we go - there remains ONE solid reason for buying a geewhizbang camera. That reason is ... STATUS. Everyone knows that he (or she) with the best camera must be the best photographer. "Hey, there's a guy with a D3 ... let's go ask his advice." Sigh!