I think the esteemed Mr Hicks was pointing up two fallacies prevalent among all us bloviators on photo forums: one is the cult of equipment, that once a new lens/camera is introduced, it is thereafter impossible to take good photographs with the older one; and an equally tenacious fallacy that says oh the equipment doesn't matter a great photographer can make a great photograph with any equipment. I like to look here to two photographers: Eugene Smith, and Ansel Adams. Couldn't be more different. Adams commented on Smith in his letters at one point, acknlowedging his achievement while remaining suspicious of the aesthetic claims made for photojournalism. Ansel Adams could not have done what he did (artistically; commiercially is another matter) with just any equipment: he needed very large format (mostly 8x10) and the selection of lenses he used was very carefully considered. Everything was tested, position, focus, exposure, development, printing. His whole life was a series of tests, photographically. He simply could not have done what he did with an Exacta.
Smith got fired from Newsweek and drove them nuts because he insisted on using 35mm when they were still using Graflex's. It was believed and possibly correctly that acceptable resolution was not to be had at that size, for a printed page in a national magazine. He believed differently and for him he was right. He always had what he considered to be the very best equipment -- usually Leica cameras and lenses -- that he could afford at any given moment. Then he'd hock it when he was broke and have to get it all back again. If he could, and often he could, he'd wear five or six cameras with different focal length lenses. He deeply understood his equipment and he was considered somewhat miraculous in the darkroom. In lighting conditions that would undo most of us today with modern lenses he was able to extract great photographs. here are two quite different ones, one candid and one set up with some kind of manipulation of lighting. He is, to my mind, the master of darkness in modern photography. It's always the dark that matters and the light is used to isolate particular things and to reveal part of the darkness.
First, from The Jazz Loft Project:
http://chicagoartmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Smith-Zoo-Sims1-1957.jpg
Then, his iconic picture from Minamata:
http://arafiqui.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/smith_minimata.jpg?w=604&h=406
Another from Jazz Loft and another from Minamata just to show what he could do. First is a quite considerable crop.
http://sauer-thompson.com/conversations/archives/2010/05/13/SmithEJazzLoftProjectMonk.jpg
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2TYRYDDWZXTR
The man wanted the best possible equipment and got everything he could from it. And yet I don't know a single Gene Smith photograph that you look at and say, my god, look at that detail, look at that sharpness. You do say that sometimes with Ansel Adams or Edward Weston or more contemporary, Steve McCrurry (Afghan Girl, among many others). There are simply no great photographers who say, regarding equipment, oh just give me any old thing, it doesn't matter. But there are none as well who would say that only the best equipment can make the best photographs.
