Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Friday, September 26, 2008

On the buying of expensive cameras -- Comment()
Little Poems of Hate wrote a provocative posting titled So I Bought This Expensive Camera... The writer loathes people who buy expensive cameras and think they are ready to be masters - as if buying a stethoscope would make you into a doctor.

Here is a quote: "I have had an alarming amount of people recently coming up to me during shoots, events or other things I may be covering to ask me how to make money with their camera. Now I personally find this odd because I view photography as an art form and nothing more. Yes, I make a living from doing it but I would also do it even if I made no money at all. I just can[base ']t think of photography in terms of being a means to an end, where you are motivated simply by the fact that making a buck will make your life fulfilling. In my life photography gives me a sense of purpose, it is my voice, my muse and my constant abiding companion."

Is my photography hobby centered around camera gear? Well, perhaps not, as I have bought a new camera every five years of so, taking a lot of photos in between. (Over 2300 photos with the newest one, Panasonic LX3, in ten days. See Light Scrape for more details about my LX3 use.)

But I must admit I haven't always been so keen on taking photos, it hasn't been so important to me as it has now been for the last few months. Although I have always liked to take photos, it has not driven me the same way as - for example - writing has been driving me, sometimes to extreme amounts of text pages per day.

I'm not yet quite sure how the current interest in photography will endure. In any case, I feel that getting a camera like the LX3 was essential for developing the skills, as the Canon Ixus 400 didn't have any manual control at all.