mfogiel
Veteran
I do not think I am alone on this forum, who finds a liking in buying cameras and lenses.
At various stages, some sobering moments transpire every now and then, and I try to simplify, then I try to compare, then to repress feelings of guilt, for spending money and stealing time I should devote to taking pictures, which instead is spent on sifting through Classifieds, etc.
However, as I am evolving as a photo addict, I am noticing an interesting pattern: gear ownership promotes photographic enthusiasm and improves your photography. How so?
In the first place, interesting things can be learned from testing and comparing gear - as long, as you do not limit yourself to shooting brick walls. The awareness of differences between lenses brings revealing conclusions:
1) same focal length lenses are more similar than you might think, therefore you should concentrate more on what you shoot, rather than with what you shoot
2) the two most desirable traits of a lens are sharpness and bokeh, and often they are antithetic, however some lenses score well on both counts
3) while a lens with beautiful bokeh can be excused for lack of great sharpness, it does not work the other way round, so if you have "dogs" with ugly bokeh get rid of them asap, the world is full of fantastic lenses, there is no need to be masochists...
4) the price of some Leica or Zeiss lenses may seem very high, but if you want to have a lens that is at the same time fast, sharp, has great bokeh, is compact, well built and holds its value over time, they are actually bargains
5) once you will have discovered the winning traits of each of your lenses, you have the excuse to concentrate on shooting with these ON A THEME, in other words, the beautiful bokeh lenses should give you a push towards portraiture, the sharp lenses towards landscape and architecture, while the compact all rounders should push you out of your home to shoot the street
Here we come to the other positive consequence of being a gearholic: invariably, sooner or later, you will get tired of shooting beautiful bokeh portraits, you will have exhausted the ideas for smart poses, and your models will decline further requests for work, after you will have given them some nice pictures - the same applies to tiredness of shooting landscapes or street, particularly if you do not travel much.
So?
So, your gear addiction comes to the rescue, you pull out of your wardrobe, the camera or lens, that was getting little use lately, and you force yourself to look at the world in a new way again.
This is called "The law of the instrument", here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
"The first recorded statement of the concept was Abraham Kaplan's, in 1964: "I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."[2]
Maslow's hammer, popularly phrased as "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" and variants thereof, is from Abraham Maslow's The Psychology of Science, published in 1966.[1]
It has also been called the law of the hammer,[3] attributed both to Maslow[4] and to Kaplan.[5]"
If you rotate your hammers regularly, you do not fall into monotony, repetitiveness, and you do not deplete your photographic enthusiasm.
Long live gearholism !
Planars by mfogiel, on Flickr
At various stages, some sobering moments transpire every now and then, and I try to simplify, then I try to compare, then to repress feelings of guilt, for spending money and stealing time I should devote to taking pictures, which instead is spent on sifting through Classifieds, etc.
However, as I am evolving as a photo addict, I am noticing an interesting pattern: gear ownership promotes photographic enthusiasm and improves your photography. How so?
In the first place, interesting things can be learned from testing and comparing gear - as long, as you do not limit yourself to shooting brick walls. The awareness of differences between lenses brings revealing conclusions:
1) same focal length lenses are more similar than you might think, therefore you should concentrate more on what you shoot, rather than with what you shoot
2) the two most desirable traits of a lens are sharpness and bokeh, and often they are antithetic, however some lenses score well on both counts
3) while a lens with beautiful bokeh can be excused for lack of great sharpness, it does not work the other way round, so if you have "dogs" with ugly bokeh get rid of them asap, the world is full of fantastic lenses, there is no need to be masochists...
4) the price of some Leica or Zeiss lenses may seem very high, but if you want to have a lens that is at the same time fast, sharp, has great bokeh, is compact, well built and holds its value over time, they are actually bargains
5) once you will have discovered the winning traits of each of your lenses, you have the excuse to concentrate on shooting with these ON A THEME, in other words, the beautiful bokeh lenses should give you a push towards portraiture, the sharp lenses towards landscape and architecture, while the compact all rounders should push you out of your home to shoot the street
Here we come to the other positive consequence of being a gearholic: invariably, sooner or later, you will get tired of shooting beautiful bokeh portraits, you will have exhausted the ideas for smart poses, and your models will decline further requests for work, after you will have given them some nice pictures - the same applies to tiredness of shooting landscapes or street, particularly if you do not travel much.
So?
So, your gear addiction comes to the rescue, you pull out of your wardrobe, the camera or lens, that was getting little use lately, and you force yourself to look at the world in a new way again.
This is called "The law of the instrument", here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
"The first recorded statement of the concept was Abraham Kaplan's, in 1964: "I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."[2]
Maslow's hammer, popularly phrased as "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" and variants thereof, is from Abraham Maslow's The Psychology of Science, published in 1966.[1]
It has also been called the law of the hammer,[3] attributed both to Maslow[4] and to Kaplan.[5]"
If you rotate your hammers regularly, you do not fall into monotony, repetitiveness, and you do not deplete your photographic enthusiasm.
Long live gearholism !
Planars by mfogiel, on Flickr
MCTuomey
Veteran
I do feel better now. Where do I send your fee?
Murchu
Well-known
Usually going through my best or favourite images, and noting the equipment, as well as the critical factors in making those images, does it for me, when I find myself looking at new photo gear too much.
steveclem
Well-known
What's your opinion of Zeiss lenses?
bonatto
looking out
Brick walls have been know to fall upon the swings of epic hammers....
Robert Lai
Well-known
Hey, you have some beautiful gear there. What was your post about again? -)
-)
MikeAUS
Well-known
Enjoyable Post. I think that photo is giving others GAS though
Pioneer
Veteran
I too find myself attracted to Zeiss lenses in all their forms and mountings. Novars, Tessars, Planars, Sonnars, Tele-Tessars, all those lovely, lovely lenses.
Robert Lai
Well-known
All kidding aside, you have some very valid points there. Spouses, however are inclined to disagree. Mine wants me to dump everything and use a crummy digital P&S.
Livesteamer
Well-known
But.......Only my Nikon F is a real hammer. Well, maybe the Alpa 6c also. Joe
shadowfox
Darkroom printing lives
My pedestrian version of the above picture would consist of:
An Old Bronica S
A beat up Ricohmatic 225
A rough-looking F3
An M4-P (not beat up, not pristine either)
But yes, I agree with the point of the post.
Paulbe
Well-known
mfogiel--good insights---thanks for posting.
And--what if you just LIKE the gear? What if handling an older camera just "feels" good?
That's what I like--the old stuff just feels like "quality" to me. I still marvel that you can get a gen-u-wine Nikon FTn-working--for $75.00. Amazing...
Paul
And--what if you just LIKE the gear? What if handling an older camera just "feels" good?
That's what I like--the old stuff just feels like "quality" to me. I still marvel that you can get a gen-u-wine Nikon FTn-working--for $75.00. Amazing...
Paul
Pioneer
Veteran
Strange, my wife is much the same.
Seriously though, she is a natural photographer. She can pick up our ancient, 3 mp Nikon Coolpix and take stunning pictures, almost everyone a keeper. Then she glances through them using that almost useless display screen, deletes half of them, then prints the rest on an old HP Deskjet with one color and one b&w cartridge. She then sits down at the dining room table with a pair of scissors, wacks them into pieces and builds a montage that she puts into an 11x17 frame and hangs on the wall. People walk through our door and immediately compliment her on her picture. Takes about 2 hours to make, two more hours for me to hang straight, and she is on to something else.
Me? I struggle for hours with a Rolleiflex shooting 3 or 4 rolls, develop, scan, work for days in Photoshop, pick two to print on my beautiful new Canon Pixma Pro, and they rarely equal what she did in a couple hours.
Sometimes I think she is right. All I need is a digital point and shoot.
But my way is a lot more fun.
Hey, you have some beautiful gear there. What was your post about again?
Exactly... (drools).
farlymac
PF McFarland
You're not a Gearaholic, but a Zeissaholic! And that ain't bad.
PF
PF
noisycheese
Normal(ish) Human
I can see no crime in that.
Not exactly a bald faced lie, in my experience.
Give a large adult a new camera or lens and he/she will find that everything he/she encounters needs photographing.
Again, I can see no crime in that.
teddy
Jose Morales
I have Leica M, Leica R, Hasselblad and Rolleiflex and Olympus OM gear. Often my problem is that I want to shoot 2 systems at once because there is no perfect all-in-one lens that will do everything that I want. So choosing gear for me can be frustrating, and when I finally make up my mind and come home after a photo session I realize that all I ever needed was a 50 f2. I try to "theme" my photography subjects with lenses but having lots of gear is great but has it's little conundrums.
hans voralberg
Veteran
Very interesting write-up! I should dig out my psychology textbook and start a research on GAS and gearholism haha.
hepcat
Former PH, USN
Strange, my wife is much the same.
Seriously though, she is a natural photographer. She can pick up our ancient, 3 mp Nikon Coolpix and take stunning pictures, almost everyone a keeper. Then she glances through them using that almost useless display screen, deletes half of them, then prints the rest on an old HP Deskjet with one color and one b&w cartridge. She then sits down at the dining room table with a pair of scissors, wacks them into pieces and builds a montage that she puts into an 11x17 frame and hangs on the wall. People walk through our door and immediately compliment her on her picture. Takes about 2 hours to make, two more hours for me to hang straight, and she is on to something else.
Me? I struggle for hours with a Rolleiflex shooting 3 or 4 rolls, develop, scan, work for days in Photoshop, pick two to print on my beautiful new Canon Pixma Pro, and they rarely equal what she did in a couple hours.
Sometimes I think she is right. All I need is a digital point and shoot.
But my way is a lot more fun.
... and THAT, my friend, is the difference between an artist and a gearhead. She uses the tool available (and that she's comfortable with) to bring her vision to life; the tool is less important than the project. To a gearhead, the equipment is important... but vision is frequently elusive. Both are valid approaches using similar process, but the reasons for engaging in the process are very different.
Sejanus.Aelianus
Veteran
Drat! And there I was, going for both badges. Still, easy come, easy go. Perhaps I should take up fishing.