You can pretend that gear doesn't matter all you want until someone asks to buy a large print and you have to tell them "Sorry, but it'll suck at that size because I shot it with a 6mp camera and crappy kit lens." Oops, there goes several hundred dollars and your professional reputation!
The fact is that choosing the right equipment is of the basic skills needed to make a good photograph. That means knowing what you need to get the job done and not compromising.
Some stuff really is so dramatically overpriced that only those with more money than brains can afford the thing. I woudln't even consider buying ANYTHING Leica makes now. Honestly, I'm thinking of selling all of my Leica gear because my beloved Olympus OM-4T bodies fit my hands better and the lenses are just as good so far as I can see, at least on the films I usually use in 35mm (Tri-X and Delta 3200)... I have too much money tied up in the Leica stuff, which I have not shot a single photo with in nearly a year.
Two interesting and seemingly diametrically opposed statements in the same thread, Chris. I'm a Leica shooter. And I don't have a lot of money, but I think I do have enough "brains" to get by most of the time.
Interestingly, the very point you make about your "beloved Olympus OM-4T" bodies is exactly the reason I'm shooting Leica today. Yes, the price of admission is high, but I prefer shooting a coincident coupled rangefinder camera over every other type of viewing system devised for cameras. I also prefer shooting with primes. For me, Leica makes sense, and I only have a
small fortune invested in my three bodies, Visoflex III and eight lenses rather than a
large fortune. As a matter of fact, I have only spent less than the cost a new M9-P body and a used Noctilux on my entire outfit. Even at that, however, I've never had so much tied up in my gear.
I've shot weddings and sports with M42 Pentax Spotmatics. I've done aerial work with a Mamiya C220. I shot macro and forensic work for years with an EOS1 and 28-105 zoom with close-up filters. It is possible to do 95% of what anyone needs to do with any generalist gear. Pretty much all lenses built since the advent of the Canon EOS1 in 1989 are computer designed and are amazing performers; even the cheap kit lenses today are amazing performers. There are differences, of course, but they're so minute as to be negligible in real world application.
I would argue that ergonomics and system features (viewing system type and lens system depth) are more important today than comparing IQ (trying to count angels on the head of a pin) among any of the bodies of the leading brands. They may all render slightly differently, but all of them will get the job done. If you took a half-dozen comparable cameras with comparable lenses and shot the same scene and set 16x20 prints out side by side without reference to which was which, they'd all be acceptable and no one could tell you definitively which was shot with what equipment.
So... you buy the brand that "feels good" and has the right "stuff" in the system to accomplish what you need to do. For you, that's your Olympus OM bodies. It just so happens that the right "stuff" for me is a coincident coupled rangefinder camera, and Leica happens to be the only supplier of that kind of equipment right now, so I'm shooting Leica.
Does following your own logic about
"...choosing the right equipment is of the basic skills needed to make a good photograph. That means knowing what you need to get the job done and not compromising" and using Leica for those very reasons cause me to fall into your "more money than brains" category?
