I earn my living through photography and try, like everyone else, to keep up with the latest equipment releases: cameras, software, computers.

OK, not only because it’s my job. Part of me just likes cameras and computers very much and it’s as simple as that.

However, I don’t only pay attention to the high end of the market. If anything it’s information about the cheapest cameras and computers that end up being the most valuable the most useful to me professionally.
Not as tools to work with but as indicators of just what sort of a market I’m working in.

If you earn your living making photographs or videos (or are even considering doing so) perhaps you should take a trip to look around your local Big Box Electrical Goods Store next time, rather than go to have yet another look at that 4000 € Canon or Nikon you’ve got your eye on. There’s a lot to learn there.

My reasoning?

Ten or fifteen years ago I met a photographer on a commercial job who impressed me no end because he could set up his strobes (which he mixed in with ghastly overhead trade show strip lighting), “guess” the settings for his lights and camera, and produce beautifully exposed transparencies for his client. Over the years he had acquired skill as a craftsman and this skill was part of what he had to sell.

He wasn’t alone. Countless photographers could tell you what f-stop to use without touching an exposure meter. Good dark-room printers could read a black and white negative so well that their first test print was nearly perfect.
Skill, experience, craft. Something worth possessing, something to earn a living with, to “profess”.

It seems to me that much of modern technology is devoted to making that kind of craftsmanship obsolete.

Of course some pre-digital skills still have residual value nowadays. I think Photoshop is easier to understand if you have had some darkroom experience. You’ll produce a better digital file if you have had to work with the discipline of exposing Kodachrome and Velvia. Nevertheless, there are plenty of young photographers out there who have done neither and seem to get by perfectly well.

That said, the thrust of camera technology (all technology for that matter but cameras are what interest us here most) is to remove the need for craft as an obstacle (to making images).
As a professional, you can no longer rely upon your hard earned craftsmanship to earn you a living. At least not technical craftsmanship.

This notion of skill obsolescence doesn’t only apply to analogue techniques.

A couple of years ago I was tempted to learn Flash.

There were so many impressively intricate websites being made with it. Knowing Flash seemed to be part of a skill set required by any ambitious “imaging professional” especially for putting together those things of the future, “multimedia” packages.

Now, we are told (especially by Apple) that Flash is a thing of the past. Mastery of it is certainly not a skill I would encourage anyone to rely on to earn a living in five year’s time.

Every computer-based task for which there is a popular demand or need will, in time, become simplified, if only for economic reasons. Vulgarization of production processes is an essential part of transforming niche into mass markets. So why bother investing time and energy learning to solve problems the hard way when there are countless, far more experienced, people already working on developing simple solutions for you (and everyone else)?

My conclusion, from a business investment (both time and money) standpoint; only learn the barest minimum required to solve your immediate problems and apply that knowledge straight away. By the time you obtain complete mastery of any technology it will be obsolete and you will have neglected all the other things you should have been attending to while you were learning it.

I exaggerate? Yes, but not that much. Of course the issues are far more complex. This is a sketch rather than an oil painting but the basic outlines hold true.

Go to see what sort of a camera you can buy for two or three hundred euros (dollars, whatever). None will be as good as your DSLR that costs eight or ten times as much but all of them will produce files good enough for a double page scoop spread in Paris Match. No, just owning one of these cameras won’t make anyone a photographer but neither will your expensive kit guarantee that your work will be any better than someone with a good eye, an idea, the gift of being in the right place at the right time and a cheap lambda camera.

As a professional photographer you (I) have to face up to the idea that neither your craft nor your kit are going to future-proof your business. If anything, unless you have an immediate (paying) demand for it, “investing” in high-end camera and computer gear right now is just as likely to be a short-cut to making your business more financially vulnerable than it needs to be.

Another example:

I have a Canon 5D MK II which I like very much.

In theory, I also like the idea of a “hybrid” camera that will allow me to produce exquisite quality video.

In practice it turns out that things aren’t that simple at all: shooting video with the 5D MK II requires no end of supplementary equipment just to be able to record decent sound and hold the camera steady (which are kind of basic requirements). Even then it’s not particularly suited to documentary work being slow and difficult to focus. The down side of that beautiful “cinema look” shallow depth of field is that sometimes shallow depth of field is exactly what you don’t want, especially if you’re trying to do rapid reportage.

The HD video files the camera produces require a fast computer for editing (faster than anything I need for photo work) and enormous amours of (fast access) disk space. Several times over if you’re serious about backing up.

When you have edited your footage you will discover that it simply isn’t practical to stream it online to a large public at full resolution. Yes, you can view it in all its glory on your high-end Mac but go back and look in the Big Box Electro Store: have you seen what the specs are of the computers the average client buys? Most of them aren’t capable of playing your footage without downloading it and most people’s internet connections are simply far too slow. So you have to down-res and compress your video to a point where you might just as well have shot it on a far more modest camcorder.

I currently own a 5D MK II, a 550D that I bought to use only for video and a Sanyo Xacti 2000 HD. The Sanyo cost under 400 euros. I’ve tricked it out with a Fader ND filter and some other bits and bobs but it still comes in far, far cheaper than either of the DSLRs. It is also much better suited to the actual task of making video files and the results are quite impressive. Yes, I can, in theory, get much better image quality with the 5D MK II but at what cost (both financial and logistical)? A year and a half ago the 5D MK II was set to revolutionize the video and stills world. To some extent it has done so but the fact remains that is is a flawed piece of (incomplete) technology. A lot of people have spent a great deal of time and money trying to compensate for those flaws to be able to work with it professionally. Those who have managed to implement their solutions rapidly will have used the camera when no alternative existed but, just a few months from now, the market will be awash with new models, cheaper, better designed and better equipped. Is it appropriate to always use the newest technology or better to wait until it trickles down to a cheaper and more accessible manifestation?

There is a cost attached to the early adoption of new technology both from a creation and a consumption point of view. Consistently work with the latest kit and you risk paying a premium and not seeing an adequate short-term return on your investment. Produce (“HD”) work that can only be consumed at its full quality on the most recent high-spec devices and you are either limiting your potential audience or guaranteeing that it will have to be reduced in size and quality for distribution.

A last thought and a comment on the photo illustrating this post. The camera I’ve enjoyed using the most – both for what it can do and for its limitations – is the Canon S90. In a previous post I’ve written about using it professionally. You can pick one up almost anywhere for under 400 euros (see my Big Box Store above). It was used to make the picture of Bruno and his son Ewen, one of my favorite images of 2010 so far.