Plenty of people will say there's no harm in collecting, as long as you can pay the bills, etc. I'd say, there can be some harm, but it depends on what you're looking to get out of your cameras. For instance, my gear theory is that certain cameras have personalities of their own, either for optics, or sensor processing, or the way they work or fit in pockets or feel or whatever. If there's enough of that special something that the camera inspires me to produce results that would be different with another camera, and it's a result that I like, then I can justify keeping and using it.
HOWEVER, if I acquire too many of those kinds, of either cameras or lenses or whatever, then I will bounce around from one to another and never really learn the ins and outs of that piece of gear, learn to make it really sing. That's when I'm hurting myself by hanging onto so much stuff, and I need to either learn the gear really well, or pass it along.
So if you collect cameras because they're a cool thing to collect, that's fine. If you delude yourself in to thinking that you need them or get any real use out of owning dozens of the things, then that's another story. If you want to get the gear to sing in your hands, then you probably need to be pretty ruthless about what you keep.
The following is a general comment, not aimed at anyone specifically. Just quoting the above as a starting point.
It just isn’t that hard to get the most out of a camera or lens, nor does it take an inordinate amount of time to get there for any specific camera. People sell themselves short by being overly willing to believe they “can’t”. It’s literally not rocket science.
As much as we like to say that “a better camera won’t make you a better photographer(true), it’s odd to hear people saying, in effect, that a camera, simply by virtue of being a different one, can hold you back, somehow.
It’s photography itself that takes time, years, but once that’s been done, adapting completely from one body or lens to another, and getting everything out of them that they have to give isn’t difficult. They’re different, and have different things to offer, but it doesn’t take that long to learn what those different things are, and how to best exploit them.
Cameras are mechanical objects with limits, lenses are physical/optical objects with properties. They’re eminently learnable and it hardly takes a lifetime. Filmstocks and their interactions with developers that takes a while. Sensors and learning their capabilities, that takes a while.
But, cameras and lenses are pretty easy to pick up and master. People should not be discouraged from trying by being told that they are unlikely to ever be as good of a photographer as they can be if they have too many tools in their arsenal. It’s hard to see that this makes sense even on the level of simple logic. A legitimate analogy is competitive driving. A formula One car is very different from an Indy car is different from a Nascar stock car, but a good driver, one who has long ago learned the encompassing skill of driving (photography) can get up to speed in a completely different type of car in fairly short order. If he was better in an F1 car, he’ll probably be better in an Indycar as well. And those differences are several orders of magnitude more profound than differences between cameras.
They’re just tools, though most offer something different, they’re not that difficult to completely master. If someone isn’t producing great photography it isn’t because he has too many tools, it’s because he’s just not a great photographer. A carpenter who owns both a claw hammer and a ball peen hammer won’t mysteriously open up avenues to making better cabinets by selling off one of the hammers. Neither will a photographer. That’s some sort of magical thinking. Cameras and lenses are not that much more difficult to get a handle on than hammers or screwdrivers, for most people of average intelligence.
On the other hand, there are people who think loading a Barnack is difficult, and I can’t understand that either. People quit too soon.
Bottom line, anyone here can get everything out of any camera or lens it is capable of producing if they take a small amount of time to get to know it’s foibles. But if you think, in advance, that you
can’t then you probably won’t.
Just not that hard.
Own what you want, don’t let someone convince you it’s a moral issue. But the flipside of that is that Marie Kondo is probably right. If something doesn’t “give you joy”, it’s out of here. Don’t hang onto stuff just to hang onto it. IMO.
My problem is that I have too many cameras from a
practical standpoint, yet they all “give me Joy.”
Stuck between Scylla and Charybdis.
