New Gear Benefits

[Mike Farley]

The prompt for this post came from Thom Hogan, who has just written a post on his website about why acquiring new gear is unlikely to improve your photography. It contains nothing earth shattering*, unless you are one of those people who endlessly (and mindlessly?) discuss technical details on Internet fora. What it did put me in mind of was a couple of recent conversations I have had with people about their gear.

http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/pur ... -gear.html

The first person has disposed of their system based on a Nikon D800 (it might have been a D810, not that it matters in this context) as it was too much camera for them, both in terms of size and resolution. At present they are building up a new system based on an Olympus E-M1 and are waiting for the long announced 300 f/4 lens to be released. If this lens fulfils its promise, it will be the equivalent of a full frame 600 f/4 in a much more compact package at a considerably lower price. Other lenses from Olympus have excellent optical performance and there is no reason to think that the 300 when it eventually arrives will be any different. It will also be compatible with Olympus' 1.4 converter, which will make it a whopping 840 f/5.6 equivalent.

The second person upgraded from the original Canon 7D to the Mk II version, the benefit to them mainly being better performance at high ISOs. As an owner of the Mk 1 7D myself, that is of interest but I will not be changing. While I agree that sensor technology evolved during the five year lifespan of the first incanation of the 7D, I rarely shoot mine at higher ISOs**. Neither do I really need the other features of the later camera, which are mainly the pro spec AF and weather sealing.

In both cases, those involved have thought about their photography and the equipment they need to pursue it. The first person realised that 36 MP is more resolution than they need and came at the expense of bulky and heavy gear. Not only that, the powerful telephoto lens they want is more than they can afford if they had stuck with Nikon. In the second instance, different needs of two people have resulted in different buying decisions.

* What I would like to know more about is the 32 bit monochrome processing mentioned in the article. While it seems counter intuitive, especially given the capabilities of monitors and printers which would be used to display the results, I am intrigued by the advantages which it puportedly offers.

** One oddity is an image which I shot handheld at ISO 5000 in the engine shed at Sheffield Park on the Bluebell Line and really worked for me. A couple of weeks later I was at the same location and thought that if the first shot had turned out so well, what would shooting the same subject at ISO 100 with the camera on a tripod do? Perversely, the results second time around lacked something and seemed flat. I do not think that the lighting conditions were substantially different between the two occasions and cannot really explain what was going on.