Old debate and possibly done to death?

[LeeRatters]

You are more likely to capture interesting images with a camera that you are familiar with and can use instinctively. As it lets you concentrate on the subject, and not be distracted by technicalities.
This is definitely a factor in camera choice..

Yes, that is fairly true.

But full frame still gives better IQ than apsc or M43 Much in the same way that MF beats FF.

Gear makes a difference

 

[whyone]

Yes, that is fairly true.

But full frame still gives better IQ than apsc or M43 Much in the same way that MF beats FF.

Gear makes a difference

Yes it does.

But not as much of a difference as knowing and not knowing what you are doing with it.

 

[myotis]

Oh good grief. Do people really believe this?

If you do anything beyond taking pictures of static objects in perfect conditions to print the size of a postage stamp of course kit matters. Unsuitable kit can get in the way and become too much of a factor in the picture or stop you taking the picture at all.

Just look at your own pictures or the ones taken by others you like and decide if they could have been taken with a wooden box with a hole in the front or some awful keychain digital from years ago. Likely they couldn't have been. The kit has to be able to at least let you if not help you to get the picture you want and believing it's all down to the photographer is just fanciful unless your needs are so basic that a wooden box or a digital keychain are enough. If kit doesn't matter you might as well just give up photography and take up drawing and painting as you'll have more chance of capturing an image than with some kit and it'll be a lot more interesting.

And BTW. Who cares what other people think? If you're relying on photography to put food on your plate then I suppose you need to but other than that? Nupe. I don't care.

Better kit is on a sliding scale with each improvement making it easier to get better results more consistently and reliably. The best camera I've had is my Sony A7cII. It has its issues but it also enables me to take pictures and do it quicker and more reliably than any other camera I've ever had. Of course kit matters.

I don't think @AndrewFlannigan is saying kit doesn't matter, but that if you can't make interesting photographs with your existing kit, getting better kit is unlikely to help.

It may well expand the types of photographs you can tackle, but limited kit shouldn't stop a good photographer from making good (interesting) photographs, albeit within the limitations of whatever equipment they have access to.

While not laying claim to being a good photographer, if I only had a pinhole camera, I would be out looking for subjects that I found interesting and that would also suit the style of photographs produced by pinhole cameras.

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

But not as much of a difference as knowing and not knowing what you are doing with it.

Perhaps the difference it makes is psychological?

I used to find that a new (to me) camera resulted in my producing pictures I felt more pleased with - until it was no longer new to me.

 

[Stephen L]

I used to find that a new (to me) camera resulted in my producing pictures I felt more pleased with - until it was no longer new to me.

Oh so true

 

[Eucris]

The way I look at gear is like this: if Eric Clapton was given a £10 guitar from "Woolies" he would make it sing. If I was given a £6,000 Lowden I would make it sound horrendous.

 

[LeeRatters]

Yes it does.

But not as much of a difference as knowing and not knowing what you are doing with it.

Yes, but also no

If you were shooting the Milky Way on M43 with an f/4 zoom and then you shot it on a Sony A75 with a 24GM, you would have a big difference to the final result with the same knowledge

 

[Phil V]

Yes it does.

But not as much of a difference as knowing and not knowing what you are doing with it.

Yes, but also no

If you were shooting the Milky Way on M43 with an f/4 zoom and then you shot it on a Sony A75 with a 24GM, you would have a big difference to the final result with the same knowledge

Both of which will distill into one uncomfortable truth:
A decent photographer will know exactly what the limitations of any gear are, and will know exactly the gear to use to achieve the results they desire.

Controversially the flipside of that could be; if you don’t understand what gear you need, it’s not the gears fault.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Yes, that is fairly true.

But full frame still gives better IQ than apsc or M43 Much in the same way that MF beats FF.

Gear makes a difference

Technically that is true, but it is not always the best or most practical choice.
Statistics show that that sometimes smaller and lighter kit gives excellent results,, when heavier and larger kit is more of a handicap to shooting, than a help to better images.

 

[Phil V]

Statistics show that that sometimes smaller and lighter kit gives excellent results

Seeing as you’ve said ‘statistics’, I’m presuming you can cite a peer reviewed source for this assertion

 

[TimHughes]

Have you never shown someone two photos, one clearly out of focus, of the same subject and had the OOF one preferred? I have. Many times.

Nope. Because I don't take out of focus photos.

If only I could make the same claim

@myotis sounds like you need one of these ne-fangled cameras that nail focus every frame

Mostly joking, but it is incredible how the hit rate has improved over the years. 10 years ago, I would be happy with 90%+ of usable frames after an event, and now it's a surprise if there are any unusable ones from a focus point of view. I'm not saying the camera does it all, but the improvements in tech have made it easier.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Seeing as you’ve said ‘statistics’, I’m presuming you can cite a peer reviewed source for this assertion

Well spotted
That entire sentence is meaningless.
Much like the thread.

 

[TimHughes]

The way I look at gear is like this: if Eric Clapton was given a £10 guitar from "Woolies" he would make it sing. If I was given a £6,000 Lowden I would make it sound horrendous.

There is a lot of truth in this. Who remembers Digital Rev's "Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera Challenge"! Of course, they still had limitations based on the kit they were assigned, but they made the most of it!

 

[Beetnik]

So, to conclude, there are five, possibly six, different styles of photography so you need five, possibly six, different camera bodies and twenty four to thirty lenses if you're going to take any decent photographs.

At last, I know where I'm going wrong

 

[myotis]

@myotis sounds like you need one of these ne-fangled cameras that nail focus every frame

Mostly joking, but it is incredible how the hit rate has improved over the years. 10 years ago, I would be happy with 90%+ of usable frames after an event, and now it's a surprise if there are any unusable ones from a focus point of view. I'm not saying the camera does it all, but the improvements in tech have made it easier.

Yes, I agree, especially, for me with things like flying birds, but I still get a lot of mis-focussed flying bird photographs, and in bird photographs where the bird is partially hidden by branches and I can't manage to get the single point AF locked onto the bird.

With people and eye detection, it will often choose the wrong eye, or decide something closer than the actual subject looks more like an eye, than a real eye does.

With so called "intimate" landscapes, even the pinpoint AF is too big to grab the flower ( or other object) that I want to focus on within a larger scene.

And while I am getting better at changing the AF settings to suit different circumstances, I'm also still using manual focussing or zone focussing a fair amount of the time, because I find it more reliable and predictable.

Don't get me wrong, I love AF, but it's also, at times, exceptionally annoying. And a lot of the time I still prefer the stronger connection with the subject that careful manual focus brings: keeping AF for when I see the benefit.

I rarely get the focus wrong with manual or zone focussing. But I also have pictures, which I would have stood no chance of getting without AF, and I am appreciating the maasive improvements in AF that my Z8 brought over my D500 it replaced.

 

[myotis]

So, to conclude, there are five, possibly six, different styles of photography so you need five, possibly six, different camera bodies and twenty four to thirty lenses if you're going to take any decent photographs.

At last, I know where I'm going wrong

What has brought you to this conclusion?

 

[TimHughes]

Yes, I agree, especially, for me with things like flying birds, but I still get a lot of mis-focussed flying bird photographs, and in bird photographs where the bird is partially hidden by branches and I can't manage to get the single point AF locked onto the bird.

With people and eye detection, it will often choose the wrong eye, or decide something closer than the actual subject looks more like an eye, than a real eye does.

With so called "intimate" landscapes, even the pinpoint AF is too big to grab the flower ( or other object) that I want to focus on within a larger scene.

And while I am getting better at changing the AF settings to suit different circumstances, I'm also still using manual focussing or zone focussing a fair amount of the time, because I find it more reliable and predictable.

Don't get me wrong, I love AF, but it's also, at times, exceptionally annoying. And a lot of the time I still prefer the stronger connection with the subject that careful manual focus brings: keeping AF for when I see the benefit.

I rarely get the focus wrong with manual or zone focussing. But I also have pictures, which I would have stood no chance of getting without AF, and I am appreciating the maasive improvements in AF that my Z8 brought over my D500 it replaced.

We're going a bit off track, but why not? The AF systems do take time to configure to your needs, shooting situation, and time to practice using them. But they are amazing. My main camera for sports/events is R1, and this has several sport modes which know how those work and tracks where your eye is looking, so it's getting close to mind reading and locking focus on the eyes/face of the active player... at 40fps... and with pre-capture so if you are a bit slow with the shutter button no problem. Culling is simply picking the very best frame from an endless stream of good ones.