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There was a lot of discussion with others but not specific comments about the cameras. You said 'if you could move' you would, I wondered why you can't. I wasn't sure if it was the issues you mentioned with speed and battery capacity that stopped you, or the cost, the amount you have invested in Canon, or other reasons. As so many full time professionals are using Fuji cameras it doesn't make obvious sense to me that the product simply isn't up to the job, otherwise people wouldn't be using the product. Therefore I wondered what the 'if' was - I wasn't asking to annoy you!
You misunderstand my reasons for asking I guess Phil, this is just conversation and helping me with my thoughts and learning. I have enough experiences of life to realise there are no perfect systems for anything really, its a bit like asking a load of people what car they have and why, I would get plenty of different responses and it wouldn't give me a specific answer. And it would lead to a lot more arguments!! It would however give me some useful tidbits of information I can take away. It's very easy to just be a maverick and go it alone, get on with it and make all the mistakes without even attempting to learn, but I prefer to do all I can to make the best decisions for my needs.
You may think asking questions is the wrong way to go about it, but as it's not dictating my decisions it isn't harming them, it's improving my knowledge - that's not a bad thing. The worst thing it's doing is wasting my time, but I've spent much of the day stuck watching my poorly son and being unable to leave his room, I couldn't have done much more with my time other than read or sit on my iPad.
I believe I can learn from people's mistakes, if enough people said a certain camera, lens, light, tripod etc was a waste of money or didn't do work as they thought I could save money. You yourself want to switch brand but there are reasons you haven't yet, that's interesting for a number of reasons - both the desire to switch and the reasons you can't yet. People absolutely can learn from that. If all the Fuji switchers suddenly found an issue and went back to Canon I bet you would want to know why.
I of course agree 'people take pictures', but you have to admit it's a lot easier to do so with a camera in your hand than a sketch pad and pencil! If it didn't matter what you used you may we'll have switched to Fuji by now, but it does matter to you, don't you think your reasons for not being able to use one system over another may also apply to someone else? I thought sharing knowledge was the way it worked round here, you've argued that the Fuji system isn't of the right quality for you personally so obviously for certain situations it wouldn't be the best tool. On one hand you are stating you can shoot the same image with any camera and lens, on the other you are arguing the Fuji system is frustrating and doesn't perform as well as your Canon system. As far as I'm concerned that's learning. My needs are different to yours, once my own wedding is over I don't plan on going within 100m of a wedding ever again, I certainly won't be filming any!
It's really easy to say study people, learn etc, I'm really trying my best, I find myself watching people in a totally different way, I'm reading about and playing with light, I'm not sure what else I can do if I'm honest. I'd love to know, I get given the. Ames of books to read so I buy them, websites to visit so I visit, skills to research so I look them up and start to try to understand them. If I ask questions I get told I should be learning, but as far as I'm concerned I am learning, every day I know more about this stuff than I did the day before, I know there isn't a magic bullet and I know I'm just going to have to get on with it and learn how it works. I just like to know how others learnt, if there's anything extra I can do, I want to make sense of it all. I had people telling me several different ways to do things, stuff I read didn't make sense, stuff I watched didn't make sense, I couldn't explain why. Then a local photographer visited and we discussed what I was struggling with, he talked me through it and suddenly it clicked, I understood. I wasn't being awkward, I'm not thick, it just didn't make sense and I had good reason to be questioning.
So I think it's important to try to learn in every way I can, I respect you all and take in all the advice and information, I'm genuinely grateful for any advice any of you share. Any tips, advice or support is very much appreciated, if anyone wants to help me learn I'm keen to get on - I have real reasons to want to get 'good at this stuff' as quickly as I can I still have the same equipment I had yesterday and the day before and the day before that, I'm not rushing out to buy stuff I don't need, I just like to have an idea of what I will need to buy to take things to the next level. At some point everybody invested in some equipment, I don't think it's a bad thing to talk about it a bit in advance.
But ultimately what I've REALLY learnt from this thread is that most people bought stuff they didn't need at some point, and as the stuff is flippin expensive that's a big lesson to take away. I don't want to waste money, so before I buy something I want I have to make sure I actually need it, finding out if other people needed it is helpful. I don't want 34 lenses, I thought I'd need a couple of decent prime lenses and one nice zoom, I'd also like a nice small prime as a walkabout lens. Ultimately as I said in my first post I didn't want to invest in Canon if something like Fuji would be a good option for me, I like the smaller Fuji body and the tilt up screen, with a small lens I could be more discrete with street photography. Or I could buy a better Canon body. No rush as I keep saying, but I won't stick with my current camera and one lens for the next 5 years!
Thanks for the discussion, it's really interesting
