Camera is just a tool.

<p>Harry, my guess is that individual forensic photographers, product photographers, fashion photographers, and medical photographers would each have their own take and opinion on the subject, likely as diverse as what's been already represented in this thread. It may be that a universal claim about any particular genre or field couldn't be made and it would be more about the individual and how they work, think, and relate to their camera.</p>

<p>If I hire a mechanic to get under the hood of my car do I care what type of tools he has ? The only thing I care about is that they get the job done...</p>

<p>I don't see why you would care what kind of tools he has, though if he does a lousy job and it turns out he was using the wrong tools or inefficient ones, you might care a bit. But the mechanic himself might care about his tools, which is more like your original question. You were asking about whether <em>photographers</em> care about their cameras, not the people who look at or buy their photos. And there's been a lot of interesting and varied answers.</p>

<p>Interesting discussion. I agree that a camera is just a tool in the sense that the vision, skill, and work ethic of the photographer is more important to the final result than a bag full of trendy gadgets.</p>

<p>However, not all tools are created alike. The quality of the output of one tool can vastly surpass another even in the hands of a skilled practitioner.</p>

<p>Brand loyalty is a strange phenomenon. Identifying as a Nikon shooter or a Canon shooter doesn't make sense to me. The function of these cameras is nearly identical. The menus contain the same options, albeit in a different arrangement. Even many of the buttons are in the same place. If an hour before an important shoot someone stole all of your gear, and someone else said, "Here, use my Brand X camera and lenses," you'd probably take the same pictures in the same way that you would have with your own gear. You might have to stop and look for a button or a menu option occasionally, but the pictures original in your BRAIN. The camera just translates light and ideas into a sharable image.</p>

<p>Harry, you seem unaware that there are huge differences in the capabilities of a Canon Rebel and a Phase One or Hasselblad MF camera, with appropriate lenses. A fashion photographer is not going to use the Rebel because he needs a final image that will stand up to being printed very large, with perfection in detail. He or she will have a full range of studio lighting, assistants and, likely, have his camera tethered to a computer for instant confirmation that the goal is achieved.</p>

<p>A low end DSLR with a $75 kit lens will not produce equivalent work product. That's part of why one setup is $500 and the other is $50,000.</p>

<p>To use your other analogy, a mechanic without current electronic diagnostic tools, specific to the car he's working on, has little hope of determining that the drive-by-wire throttle actuators on my BMW are what's causing the engine management system to go into "limp home mode" and only allow 50% power. Also, modern cars often require specialized, single-purpose tools to remove certain parts. You'll want your mechanic equipped with the proper tool rather than trying to use his vicegrips to loosen a specialized part.</p>

<p>A sharpshooter's weapon is his tool, but only when he's sharpshooting. It'd be the wrong tool to shoot fish in a barrel. </p>

<p>If you drive a hybrid or full-electric car, you'd want to make damn sure the service mechanic has the knowledge and the right tools. Conversely, a Tesla service technician will probably know nothing about Chevy small blocks however competent he might be as a Tesla technician. </p>

Yesterday I was out and about and had forgotten to bring my "regular" camera. Ended up traveling

through Oakland on BART and made some photographs through the train window with my phone

instead. No worries, no big deal. It's just a tool and it simply worked as expected, even though I haven't used my phone as a camera in months... <P>

 

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<img src= "http://www.citysnaps.net/2014%20Photos/TruckTrailers.jpg"><BR>

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Oakland, California • ©Brad Evans 2014

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We need tools mainly to do things we can't do without. "Secondary" maybe (perhaps only when we use tools because they make what we could do ourselves without easier to do with), but essential too. It's a prostethic, a replacement for a bit we are missing, an extension of ourselves.<br>If we care about the job being done well, we care about the chosen tool being at least capable of extending our own failing capabilities enough to reach what we might consider a job well done. "At least", because there is a good, better and perhaps even best. How good is good enough? How good must a tool be to be able to help produce the standard of work we aspire to? An important question.

<p>just a tool, or just an instrument to the musician does not mean that the tool is not highly valued and carefully selected and cared for. I would suggest that the closer we get to the tool and the more familiar we are with it, the more it becomes invisible and enables us to pursue the task at hand. </p>

<p>It's a toy for me. Never a tool!</p>

<blockquote>

<p>For me it's about visual/technique + camera = results.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Can you post some photos where you think the camera was a part of the results.</p>

<p>Jeff asked:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Can you post some photos where you think the camera was a part of the results.</p>

</blockquote>

<p><a title="Right after take-off by David Stephens, on Flickr" href=" src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2841/12738631703_c3e8e4e4bd_c.jpg" alt="Right after take-off" width="800" height="534" /></a></p>

<p>I was asking Leszek. However, there are probably 100 cameras that could take that photo in the proper hands.</p>

<p><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=19592">Jeff Spirer</a> </p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>I was asking Leszek. However, there are probably 100 cameras that could take that photo in the proper hands.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Very funny Jeff... and maybe 10,000 cameras that couldn't take the shot.</p>

<p>Yes, knowing where to be and the proper camera settings and knowing how to hand hold and grab focus on an approaching eagle had a lot to do with this shot, but if I'd tried with a Rebel, my odds of getting a sharp shot would have fell around 50 to 80%. That's not even considering the 700mm L-series lens setup, which is really part of the "camera". Besides the focal length of the lens, the body's ability to quickly grab AF and keep focus as the eagle flies obliquely toward me are critical factors in the success of this type of image.</p>

<p>Besides the subject, the end usage of the image will often dictate equipment. Images from a fashion shoot may look okay in internet sizes here, but if it's going to be on a billboard, the megapixels of a MF body is the tool to use, not a Canon G15.</p>

<p>I do agree that for many uses, the camera hardly matters, so long as the lens is reasonably sharp, the subjects isn't moving particularly fast and the print size will not be too large.</p>

 

<p>One can get sentimental about material things, such as mountains and beaches, and, though they are not part of nature, cameras are still material things to which we may become attached to varying degrees. The mechanism by which this occurs in my case is by a process of association with places or times during which I shot the camera. </p>

<p>The old Olympus E-20 with which I shot so many photos in the early 2000s was not only my first digital camera. It was also with me during some very memorable moments, taking pictures of some places that either were already special or which became special by virtue of being photographed.</p>

<p>When I charged up a new battery for it a few months ago, it came on, but it would not display an image. I was heartbroken. The five megapixels on a tiny sensor could not begin to touch what I shoot with now, and so there is no particular reason to have felt any sense of loss, but I did. I still have not had the heart to throw it out. It is in its box, along with all of the expensive add-on lenses that I bought for it, and which now are totally worthless--unless I chose to buy another E-20 on eBay. Alas, it would not be the very same camera, even with the same specs. The old E-20 is dead; long live the E-20--in my heart. There will be no successor to the throne of the same lineage.</p>

<p>So, at least in my case, I can get sentimental about my cameras--and my lenses--but they have to have been veterans with me of some long past photographic campaign or war of some sort. Old cameras may die, but they don't necessarily fade away.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Lannie said:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>One can get sentimental about material things, such as mountains and beaches, and, though they are not part of nature, cameras are still material things to which we may become attached to varying degrees.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think that you had a slip of the fingers, but maybe not. I think of mountains and beaches as "physical" thing that we generally don't "own." Mankind owns them and they may be "material" to mankind, but not me individually. I place a high value on them, because they improve my quality of life, but I don't consider them "material" to me in the same way as, for instance, my BMW M3. I get great physical joy out of racing the M3, but I can't deny that it's a material possession that I only share with a few people and it's there mainly to satisfy my ego and need for speed.</p>

<p>Did you mean to say that mountains and beaches are "material."</p>

<p>Here is a shot made the last day that I shot the old E-20 back in August, 2007. The shot would be boring even to me, except that it is a picture of the old Spencer Southern Railway Shops a few miles from where I live. Lots of old engines and old cars are there--"streamliners" and old steam locomotives are seen there quite often. Something about this picture captures the essence of old, decaying and dying places. </p>

<p>There is no Southern Railway anymore. It merged with Northfolk and Western in 1985 or so to become Northfolk Southern. Even the visible old spur into the shops from the mainline (from which I made this shot) has seen better days. Everything about the shot--and about the day--bespoke and still bespeaks to me the essence of an earlier era. Although I did not grow up in this town, I grew up partly in another old Southern town (Spartanburg, SC) that has a similar place called "Southern Shops." </p>

<p>I also grew up in Akron, Ohio. I miss not only those old streets and old houses of Akron, but I miss the old blimp hanger out at Goodyear Aircraft where my father worked as a machinist in the 1950s. Again, by a process of association, things have become linked to events and people in all kinds of way in my memory, such that an old souvenir or memento really is (as the word "memento" tells us) a gateway to memories of my past. Not everyone is a sentimentalist, but nostalgia is something to which I am prone. I like William Faulkner's quote: "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." If one agrees, then one is going to hold onto that which is old, as a remembrance of things past.</p>

<p><a href="/photo/11374570&size=lg">http://www.photo.net/photo/11374570&size=lg</a></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I think that you had a slip of the fingers, but maybe not. I think of mountains and beaches as "physical" thing that we generally don't "own." Mankind owns them and they may be "material" to mankind, but not me individually.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>David, I doubt that we "own" anything. We just borrow it for a while. Then it's gone, whatever and whoever it is or was. Mountains and oceans are very important places in my past--or perhaps I should say in memories of my past. It is all about memories for me. If there is something I can "own" until dementia takes it from me, it is my memories--and they say that even the demented can remember the distant past. They simply cannot remember what they just did moments ago.</p>

<p>As for memory, why do we take photos, after all? For many of us, we are trying to freeze the present and keep it from fading into the irretrievable past.</p>

<p>Whether mountains and beaches are "material" or "material things" simply is not. . . material to me.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Here is one last "oldie but goody" that I took on the last day that I shot the old Olympus E-20:</p>

<p><a href="/photo/11513850">http://www.photo.net/photo/11513850</a></p>

<p>Gosh, even that day on which I shot these pictures seven years ago is visible now only through the patina of age. Seven years when you are into your seventieth year (I have completed sixty-nine) is an. . . eternity. How on earth did a day that was only seven years ago come to seem like the ancient past? I think that our sense of what is past is related to our own sense of mortality, and as time passes we are reminded more and more every day of our own mortality, and of how very brief our stay on this planet really is.</p>

<p>When I get the Furman magazine every few months, the first thing I do is go to the "Deaths" section and see if I have lost another classmate from my undergraduate days. When I get a similar magazine from the University of Florida, on the other hand, I trash it without opening it. Graduate degrees are to me only a tool to getting work, but my undergraduate years will always be "something" to be treasured--"something" intrinsically or inherently valuable.</p>

<p>Some of my cameras are like my days at the University of Florida. I use them but feel nothing for them. Some are more like my undergraduate experience, when I met the love of my life--who herself is now in the middle of the fight of and for her life as she battles Stage IV breast cancer in her bones. She is fifteen days younger than I. We go back a while--all the way to Easter Sunday, 1964.</p>

<p>Life is short. Cameras and the images they create are long. Sometimes I cannot separate any of it. It is all tied up together in memory and emotion.</p>

<p><a href="/photo/10112510">http://www.photo.net/photo/10112510</a></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Lannie, sorry to read about your beautiful wife's very serious illness. Now I understand your deep melancholy. </p>

<p>Thank you, David. I think that I have always been of that sort of personality--at least back to the last day of May of 1964, when I truly believe that I stopped living for the future and started living either in the present or the past. Sometimes I cannot even feel the difference, cannot even tell which is which for all practical purposes.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Lannie, I've always found you to be a very thoughtful, introspective correspondent, but I sensed a deeper disturbance lately.</p>

<p>BTW, did you grow up in Florida? I'm from Jacksonville and was a bit of a swamp boy. My many cousins are still there, fishin' and slapping mosquitoes. I moved to the West in the mid-1970s, but regularly visit. I attended FSU, but we needn't let that come between us. ;-)</p>

<p>Well, David, I was in Florida for nine years--seven of them in the 1970s, and two more from 1999-2001, when I went back to school in Spanish and Spanish-American literature. My two girls were born in Gainesville, and, yes, I sure poked around in enough swamps there and in south Georgia, outside Savannah, where I lived and taught for a while. From time to time I was also offshore in a kayak--which made the ocean more interesting, but for which I feel no nostalgia whatsoever.</p>

<p>As for the "Mighty Gators," I never bothered to go watch them play--but I played with the gators beside my boat now and again, one of which almost holed the hull of my home-built wooden boat.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>I've found that gators can be nasty...</p>

Lanny, first off I amsorry to hear of your wife's illness. We have had to bear tragic situations and it is devastating I well know.

 

As a philosopher, Lannie. you will remember the thoughts of Aeschylus who helped define the arc of life. Especially as we get older.( I am now 77 )

-- "God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer, And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."-------

 

As Edith Hamilton wrote in The Greek Way, " his insight in the riddle of the world has not yet been superseded." Harsh but probably true enough.

 

Ok, I will answer about the tie to cameras as tools for insight, joyful , sad and/or sentimental. When asked I say that photography is my 'hobby.' It is something much more than that. We all know that. Best wishes, my friend,

Gerry