What drove your decision to buy a more capable camera early on in your photography experience?

[Guth]

I suppose to answer the question in the title, I'd say my "more capable" camera was a used Canon F-1 that I bought used about a year or so after graduation. I wanted full manual exposure, and the F-1 was an absolute tank.

Thanks Drew. I simply find it curious that while some people never stepped beyond the first camera they owned, others decided to continue on with more capable cameras for one reason or another. It is interesting to find out why.

 

[wlewisiii]

Thanks Drew. I simply find it curious that while some people never stepped beyond the first camera they owned, others decided to continue on with more capable cameras for one reason or another. It is interesting to find out why.

It's actually a fairly interesting question. I started with a fairly capable camera and would have stayed with it a lot longer had it not gone away along the way, as it were. That lead to a worse camera ... O_O trying to climb back up to where I had been became a never ending tail chase for a good 20 years till I'm now very happy with my primaries (Leica M 240 & Nikon D810) and can buy things for fun (Nikon F4 & soon a Nikon S2).

 

[Pál_K]

Thanks Drew. I simply find it curious that while some people never stepped beyond the first camera they owned, others decided to continue on with more capable cameras for one reason or another. It is interesting to find out why.

The Pentax SP500 I bought as my first serious camera, I used it and its 55/2 Super Takumar excusively for 15 years. Over the following decades I have acquired - and still own - over 100 pro-level and advanced-level cameras in various formats with features that may be considered more capable as an instrument. I did that not to improve my reasonably good photography; I did that because of geekiness in enjoying the features, the viewfinder displays, the way cameras are so different in the ways they go about accomplishing the same thing. Yet I still feel most at ease with the simple SP500 and continue to use it most often.

 

[Pioneer]

I was shooting a K1000 for years and was happy as a pig in a mud puddle. I thought that I had the best.

Then I started reading camera magazines and they kept telling me I needed a new camera. But I didn't believe them because I knew they were just trying to sell more advertisements.

Then about 10 or so years ago I started following a couple of forums and they were telling me the same thing. I needed a new camera. Since they didn't seem to be trying to sell advertisements I believed them. So I finally broke down and bought a new one. But that didn't seem to do the trick because my photos still looked about the same as the ones I had been taking with the K1000.

So I bought another camera...and another. Then I bought a digital, and another digital. Pretty soon I had a drawer full of cameras but my pictures still looked about the same as what I was getting with the K1000.

So I finally decided that I needed to take a college course on photography. On the first day the teacher handed out a list of cameras that would work for her course. Would anybody care to tell me which camera was on the top of that list???

I learned my most important lesson that day. It really wasn't about the camera at all and the camera I had bought from a pawnshop back in 1978 really was the best if I just knew what I was doing with it.

I still own too many cameras but at least I know how to use them. And I still use that old K1000 the most.

This is a true story!

...and we WILL NOT discuss lenses...

 

[Guth]

Over the following decades I have acquired - and still own - over 100 pro-level and advanced-level cameras in various formats with features that may be considered more capable as an instrument. I did that not to improve my reasonably good photography; I did that because of geekiness in enjoying the features, the viewfinder displays, the way cameras are so different in the ways they go about accomplishing the same thing.

That's an entirely valid answer. Most of the hobbies that I've been involved in over the years have more than their fair share of gearheads involved. (In some cases I've counted myself among them.) Photography is certainly no different in this regard.

 

[Guth]

Then about 10 or so years ago I started following a couple of forums and they were telling me the same thing. I needed a new camera. Since they didn't seem to be trying to sell advertisements I believed them. So I finally broke down and bought a new one. But that didn't seem to do the trick because my photos still looked about the same as the ones I had been taking with the K1000.

So I bought another camera...and another. Then I bought a digital, and another digital. Pretty soon I had a drawer full of cameras but my pictures still looked about the same as what I was getting with the K1000.

Few things (if any) drive herd mentality like the Internet has. A little over a decade ago I created an online forum (not photography-related) and over the years I watched the sort of impact members had upon one another when it came to their spending / purchasing decisions. At times I almost felt bad (I say this half-jokingly) as I was the one that had created the online environment for such discussions in the first place. But more than likely that is because I had experienced something similar to what you've gone through only in the world of guitars rather than photography.

 

[Godfrey]

I was in high school. The camera club/photo staff I joined had a raft of fixed lens RF cameras (mostly Ricoh). I was shooting at football games and doing portraits ... I didn't like what I could get with a 45mm lens, and figured a nice telephoto around 200mm and a portrait lens around 85mm would make a difference in my photos. My uncle helped me buy (he paid for 90% of it) a Nikon F Photomic FTn, and I borrowed his Nikkor 85mm. A few months later, I bought a Vivitar 200mm. It gave me exactly what I wanted/needed to make better photos for the newsletter and yearbook.

G

 

[wlewisiii]

I've mentioned it before but I'd wouldn't mind the chance to borrow a TARDIS and go back to December 1981 and while younger me wasn't looking, scratch out 19E (Tank crewman) on my enlistment documents for the US Army and put in 84B (Still Photographer) instead. I'd leave in the required tour in Germany 😉 That was FUN. I'd also sneak a 1982 Nikon catalog into my younger me's backpack since I was pretty hooked on Canon at the time. Don't get me wrong, Canon was good but Nikon was what professional shooters were using and to try to get an F2 & a 50/1.8 for graduation? A foot in the door, as it were... 😉

 

[Deleted member 65559]

The first camera I bought was a Minolta SR with a clip on meter (circa 1967). Popular Photography magazine was the source of all info at the time. After a while I sold or traded that and bought a Nikkormat. I wasn't that keen on the shutter noise....and soon ended up with a Nikon F. Leica came shortly thereafter just by chance, walking by the Leica store on my way to university.

 

[JeffS7444]

I started at a pretty high level, with my grandfather's old Pentax Spotmatic + 55/1.8 Super Takumar lens. It only limited my photography because the shutter kept failing for some reason (Lemon camera? Lousy repair tech?). My sense of composition and light was woeful, but I had plenty of enthusiasm, and was sufficiently ignorant not to be too put off by my lack of skill.

But most of the camera buys which followed, were simply about my wanting to buy something. And buy I did: I quickly discovered that if I were willing to accept secondhand equipment in less than perfect condition, my limited funds could buy me a lot of camera, especially if I sold off the older equipment to help fund it. And thus, long before my photographic skill merited such things, I was shooting with Nikon F3, followed by Leica M.

In many ways, Leica M was a downgrade, but it sure was a classy one. And TBH, I needed something to impose photographic discipline upon me, because left to my own devices in the vast playground which was Nikonland, I was likely to wind up owning mountains of gear, but mastering none of it. In retrospect, the "magic" of Leica was that it made me feel incredibly privileged to own a battered camera body + 50/2 lens but (shrug) it worked! It got me to take the 50 mm focal length much more seriously, and not to automatically dismiss moderate-speed optics. It was with the M4-2 + 50 mm Summicron lens that I really felt that my skills had taken a noticeable leap forward. It also didn't hurt that I had started to carry a camera with me more often, not just on weekends and out of town treks.

Older (wiser?) me realizes that I might have accomplished much the same with any number of other pared-down outfits, but I think my younger self "needed" Leica's high pricing to rein in my materialistic urges. Although I no longer own any Leica M, the lessons of those days, of lighter, pared-back systems, have stuck with me.

Soviet cameras weren't really an option for me until the 1990s, when Kiev 60, 88 and Lubitel imports became a thing. I guess Cambridge Camera had been importing Zenit and Kiev-4 for some time, but I never saw that stuff in the western USA.