Working professionally is only partly about the pictures.
agreed, as a professional it's more about working to a brief, and getting hired requires personality, so in a way spending money on something that will make you more cheery and pleasant to work with (like a holiday) is a better personal investment than any piece of gear
but a real pro 'tog knows that he (or she) must have equipment that won't let them down and will produce the images their clients will be willing to pay for.
only if they know how to make it do that, I (as a full time professional) often struggle with the subjectivity of clients expectations when they don't really know what it is they want either, good clients will understand that and will pay for a re-shoot, if they ended up not liking the pictures but they were objectively good just not to their tastes
especially not when professional kit is just a week or twos wages to a working professional.
a penny saved is a penny earned- one of my pro photographer pals shoots only with a 6d, a 16-35 and a sigma 35 1.4, i have about 30k worth of stuff, he owns his own house and took a holiday last week, I dont
They don't do it because if the equipment breaks down on them then it costs them a lot of money in lost time and productivity. Plus, using pro quality kit usually increases productivity, taking less time to deliver the finished result.
having 2 of a mid range piece of gear is probably a better shout than having one of a high end piece of gear. One of my a7iii's got laser damage to the sensor. Ive smashed a 70-200 canon lens from slipping over in the wet
As others have said it depends how you define 'low end'. I've read loads of articles from fantastic, busy pros who use relatively 'consumer' gear, the Fuji 18-55 2.8-4 springs to mind in one. Mirrorless has really fractured the market (in some fields) in that respect.
One of the most highly regarded wedding photographers in the UK chooses to use the Nikon 35mm 1.8 over the 'pro-grade' f1.4 version. Loads of working pros use Fuji gear now, and often with the cheaper f2 lenses rather than the expensive 'pro' ones.
the lighter my kit the freer i feel to create, it's weird to me that pro=1.4=metal=heavy and big, I want pro grade optics in a small f2 plastic housing
I am a full time self employed photographer and buy plenty of camera crap I don’t need but just want. So do many others, I would go as far as saying the majority do and I know quite a few. There is the odd old school type guy who only buys based on business reasons but quite a lot of pro photographers are just as gear hungry as amateurs, sometimes more so.
As for the original question posted by the o.p sometimes it’s fun to bring along non “professional” equipment just for the challenge, a few giggles or just the shear enjoyment factor. Depend on the equipment obviously.
100% I buy new kit just to add novelty to the job sometimes, get all the safe shots done and then work exclusively with whatever lens I just bought to really put it through it's paces
also I will buy things that make my life easier, professional gear isnt always about cameras, its about having a bag full of clamps and mcguiver kit so you can rig anything
Not sure about entry level, but I suspect there are many professionals in all sorts of trades who are continuing to use equipment which might be seen as obsolete just because it still works. Whereas other, non professionals are quicker to upgrade just because it's new.
theres a lot of value in knowing your kit inside out, but i've always shot with the idea of pushing the boundaries of my kit, an example: when I first started shooting professionally I always just kept the thought in the back of my mind that one day iso 6400 will be clean as a whistle, so even though it looks grainy now, in the near future camera tech will be where I want it to be so that I dont have to make the compromises I do today