A Prickly Subject- To Gear or Not to Gear

Right now, I’m building up the financial and mental fortitude to invest in a new camera body. Buying an expensive piece of gear is a slow process for me, I hem and haw, justify it one way, then justify the other until I either pull the trigger and spend the money or put it off for some indeterminate time. Before I drop the bucks on whatever piece equipment I’m considering, I look for an honest answer to the following question:

Is my current equipment holding back my creativity?

That isn’t as easy a question to answer as it may seem. Sometimes I (and I’m pretty sure it ain’t just me), want a new piece of gear because it’s all shiny and new, gleaming with technology and cutting-edge electronics. It glitters, it’s so damn shiny. That is alluring, sexy, like a poster-girl. But just like a poster-girl, that new piece of gear may be fun to look at, but totally lacking in substance. And more importantly will do nothing to advance my art or career.

Now sometimes, like the purchase of a new pair of running shoes makes me want to run,  buying a new piece of gear provides a short-lived boost in productivity. New toy to play with! Fun! But that novelty wears off, the toy lands somewhere in the camera bag, rarely to emerge again. I want to feel assured that any new purchase has a long-lived burst in creativity, productivity or quality of my images. A couple of examples:

Several years ago, I invested in a top-end super telephoto: Canon’s 500mm f4L. It is a stellar piece of glass and has allowed me to make images that would have otherwise been impossible. I’ve sold many, many images made with that lens, it’s paid for itself a couple of times over. But more importantly it allowed me to explore a new way of seeing, the compressed perspective, the magnification, the beautiful even bokeh in the background. That piece of gear, expensive as it was, took my photography to a new level.

Other times, I’ve opted not spend the bucks. I haven’t bought a new camera body in about 3 years. In that time, Canon has introduced several new bodies, but I’ve always opted against them, deciding, in the end, that the minor changes in megapixels, speed, or electronics was not hindering my photography. In those years, I was concentrating heavily on wildlife, and my cameras were more than sufficient. Creatively, if I was struggling, it wasn’t because of my equipment.

Right now, I’m deciding whether to invest in a Canon 5d Mark iii. As an un-sponsored, struggling pro, that kind of investment does not come easily, and I have to think through the probable outcome. For years now, I’ve been shooting with APS-C sensor cameras. (For those of you who don’t know, APS-C sensors are about 2/3 the size of a 35mm piece of film, or more relevant here, about 2/3 smaller than the sensor in a 5d.) What that means is that all the photos I shoot are essentially cropped by about a third from what they would be in a full-frame sensor. That can be an advantage when shooting wildlife, it essentially extends your lens by a factor of 1.6. But it costs big in the wide-angle realm. Recently, I’ve desperately wanted that wide-angle, for landscapes, for aurora photography, and for a series on winter sports I’ve got in mind. In short, I just can’t make those kind of images with my current gear. The conclusion? Indeed, in this case, my gear is holding me back.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the damage to my bank account any less significant.

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