Three Ugly Truths About Photo Gear

This is the first of two installments in a series.  Here, I’ll address three ugly truths about photo gear and then will offer some suggested remedies.  Part two is coming in a couple of days.

Here are the three ugly truths:

Truth 1: Something Better is Coming and Soon

What you have is going to be outdated.  Probably already is.  You may feel as though what you’re shooting with now is meeting your needs, but most assuredly, all those who benefit from you believing that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence (see Truth 3 below) are working hard to plant seeds of doubt.  Better high ISO performance, faster contrast detect autofocus, more golly gee features like auto stitched panorama images and in camera HDR merging, connectivity options involving GPS and WiFi, and whatever else… they’re all coming.  And they’re coming soon.  Oh sure, maybe they’re still on the drawing board in the labs at Sony and Canon, but the rumor sites are getting you all whipped up, telling you that any day now (please keep checking back!) you’re gonna be able to get your grubby little hands on them.  Any day now…

Read on for more…

Truth 2: The Other Camera (or Lens or whatever) Has Something You Want

No one camera, system, lens, doo dad, or whatever does every single thing that you want.  Some days you want small and light.  But on those days you wonder if you’re capturing the best pixel level quality possible.  Some days you want to maximize auto focus speed but you tire of carrying the big boy around.  Other times you wish you had military grade weather sealing… other days it’s not so important.  There are times when you think you want to embrace the creative potential in a constrained shooting experience, such as working with one focal length lens, and other times you wish you had the 18mm to 300mm bazooka.  Once in a while you long for the simplicity of manual controls, old fashioned dials, and that sweet feeling of cold brass against your fast-paced world worn fingers.  Other times you want a do-everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink microcomputer image capturer.  But nothing friends will do every single thing you want.  Nothing.

Truth 3: No Matter What They Say, They Just Want to Sell You Stuff

The photo podcast, website, book publishing, seminar and workshop industry wants to sell you things.  Entrepreneurs who hung up the briefcases and suits in exchange for a life of following their photographic passion got mouths to feed and mortgage payments to make.  And so they are looking to reel you in and hard.  They offer value by answering your questions and giving you tips and it’s all good, clean fun, but they are very focused on the bottom line and you are the target market.  The hits they get on their sites are directly related to gear content and so that they give you.  Camera reviews, pushing the next big thing, and making you believe that Truth 1 and Truth 2 are actually not truths at all are their stock in trade.  Here at 2 Guys Photo our top posts are the gear related posts.  It’s not even close.  That’s what people hit up the google search bar for and whenever you get all crazed up about gear, maybe just maybe you’ll hit those links to affiliates or to their workshops or books or whatever.  Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of fine folks out there who want to help make you a better photographer.  But, generally speaking, they are looking to hook you in so you’ll eventually be willing to pull the plastic out of your wallet or pocketbook and hit the Buy button.  Best way to do that?  To make you forget all about Truth 1 and Truth 2.

So, what’s a person to do?  Please check back to 2 Guys Photo soon for the antidote.