Whose advice do you take?

[roger_hicks1]

Whose advice do you value most when you are looking to buy something

new? Not an individual person, but what SORT of person? Journalists?

Professionals? Amateurs? How many people do you ask? And how do you

weight their advice? (As in 'probably knows what he's talking about'

or 'clearly has no idea what he is talking about').

 

Just curious.

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

[erin.e]

I try and talk to repair technicians and avoid being an early adopter!

[wai_leong_lee]

Are you doing a survey? I'm sure you'll find a multitude of answers, and multiple sources will be used by most responders. The usual suspects-- friends with good tech knowledge, informative websites, forums such as PN, forumers who have good knowledge such as yourself, etc.

[michael_kastner]

Here on this forum! Where else? Of course there are pros and cons. Good examples: hoods and tabs. I like to collect statistics. The more the better.

[terry_rory]

People who demonstrably take good photographs with the equipment I am asking about. That helps a lot.

 

Almost definitely not magazines. Most of them are after freebies. (There are a couple of exceptions like Black and White Photographer)

 

DPREVIEW for digital (but only for technical information)

 

Most important is people who have extensive experience (as a user) of the type of camera I am asking about and are dispassionate about the pluses points and minuses.

 

I would accept advice happily from a pro but I cannot afford the sort of gear that most pros use so that is bit irrelevant really.

 

Not collectors. Nice people I am sure but we have different needs and different criteria by which we judge whether a camera is good.

[john_amiet2]

Until recently, my local dealer. He would slip some gear into the boot (trunk) of my car and tell me I didn't have to pay for it until I was happy with it! If not happy, I could return it.

 

I only remember returning something once. It was a Rollei outfit he wanted me to compare with my Hasselblad outfit. The Rollei went back.

 

These days, I take wide sweeps of respected forums such as PN and distil the collected info to where I believe it sits fairly honestly. Usually, that results in 2nd hand purchases.

[steve_unsworth1]

Roger, people I know whose opinions I respect.

 

Magazines, I tend to read as many reviews as possible and compare them. I find the two big French magazines 'Chasseur d'Image' and 'Reponses Photo' more exhaustive than AP in the UK.

[alun]

Roger,

 

Depends what I'm thinking about buying, but if it's camera stuff, then websites, discussion

forums, magazines, other photographers ansd enthusiasts. I have found sites like this

useful recently because increasingly I find that what I want to know will revolve around

some particular aspect of a camera's performance. So I try to avoid the "it rocks" or "it

sucks" kind of website. Increasingly too I find that the kind of detail (obsessive detail?)

which can be found on websites and in email exchanges with other users simply cannot be

matched by retailers/dealers.

 

To try and answer your specific question, I suppose I resort to experienced amateurs,

primarily, and professionals if I can reach them. As one or two other respondents have

suggested, I treat magazine and journo coverage with a degree of scepticism (perhaps

unfairly), assuming that they haven't paid over their own hard-earned cash....

 

Best regards,

Alun Severn

[jimsimmons]

People who have used the equipment to take the kinds of photos I take in the types of situations in which I'll also be photographing.

[sergio_ortega7]

Roger,

 

I've been reading your articles in Shutterbug for years and have always found something new to learn in every one, particularly about Large Format photography. I nearly bought an Alpa outfit based on your writings.

 

I suppose the stage of one's photographic evolution determines how much advice one seeks out and from whom. Decades ago I would listen intently to the old guys at the local camera store and place much importance on their opinionated rants. Then I found out they did not have the answers I was looking for, and some of them did not really know very much. I began buying and reading all sorts of photography books and magazines (long before the internet) on every subject possible; these helped tremendously, and after a while I learned which writers knew their stuff, which ones were just hyping the latest equipment and which ones were simply paid flaks for camera manufacturers.

 

In the end I would have to say I've learned most from simply taking the plunge, spending the money, trying things for myself, making mistakes and then learning from all my experiences, good and bad. I believe I read here once, from an experienced contributor in response to one of the thousands of questions asking "which camera/lens should I get?", that actually buying and using photo equipment is the only sure way of learning about the equipment. Buying and doing it is the cost of learning in many cases.

[paul_beavin]

Hi Roger--your advice is always good! :-) And I find the extended discussions on the sites like this one to be very valuable. Trevor Hare recently asked about .58 vs .72 finders in the M6---and the discussion was great. Very thoughtful answers from real live users...

Paul

[joel_matherson]

I often get amused at people who quote from fancy looking websites but generally the info is factually wrong. I think people confuse a proffessionally looking site for experience.

[vivek iyer]

Both technical information (MTFs, etc like Zeiss hands out for its offerings) and *general* folks.

 

I like to draw my own conclusions.

 

Sorry, none of the professional reviewers/sites/magazines/books do anything for me.

[vivek iyer]

Both technical information (MTFs, etc like Zeiss hands out for its offerings) and *general* folks.

 

I like to draw my own conclusions.

 

Sorry, none of the professional reviewers/sites/magazines/books do anything for me.

[raymond_tai]

Like millions of Americans I rely on marketing brochures and politicians for accurate

information. Paper or plastic sir?

[jtdnyc]

I'm spoiled. I bought my first Leica from Jim Lager and, while he remained active in sales, took his advice implicitly for more than a decade. What SORT was he? Even at that time, a published expert who was also, in his words, an enthusiast first and a salesman second.

 

When I can't arrange to have personal contact with a leading expert, I seek advice from every possible source and weight the opinion of each according to criteria that vary with the situation. I have come to trust a number of the more experienced participants in this forum.

 

I also try to emulate the photographic practices of photographers whose results are similar to the results I want to achieve.

 

I have been convinced, on a number of occasions, to buy equipment or supplies based on demonstrations at trade fairs or manufacturer-sponsored events at which company personnel other than the guys from sales and marketing have been present.

 

I tend to be skeptical of the flavor-of-the-month enthusiasm of some photographic journalists but value highly the opinions of those writers who also publish books and therefore have a reputation to protect.

[roger_hicks1]

Thanks everyone, for the thoughtful and often amusing replies: I especially liked Sergio's point about the rants from the old guys in the camera store. I also very much took to Erin's answer about repair technicians.

 

The question really was asked principally out of idle curiosity, though it reinforced my fear that perhaps most people don't trust journalists very much. Of course I have a privileged position there as I know quite a lot of them personally and therefore have a pretty good idea of who I can trust (and on what topics) and who I can't. There are plenty of both.

 

Thanks too to those who said kind words about me but really, I wasn't fishing for compliments -- if you try that, you all too often end up catching sharks, barracudas and piranhas.

 

Thanks again,

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

[SCL]

I look over the broad range of commentary, then proceed to personally follow up on the items of interest to me. I do this, usually, by checking technical journals, respected researchers - typically with whom I have developed a relationship, and a few judiciously placed telephone calls. I do not give much weight to what dealers, salespeople, or general users (amateurs) attribute to new products, nor self-styled experts. I weigh advice based on specific experience...not heresay, rumor, etc. Sometimes ths method works, sometimes it lets me down.

[andreatau]

> Whose advice do you take?

 

How about "the advice of those who suggest exactly what I already had planned to do?" ;-)

[jeremy_tok]

I rarely ask for gear advice and have as much occasion to take it. Some products create a great deal of buzz all by themselves, good or otherwise, and it then becomes a matter of trying out for myself the well-regarded ones as my budget allows.

 

A good indication of a great product is when someone with a big shooting arsenal and a style I covet keeps reverting back to it. Or even when the manufacturer reverts back to it after a failed attempt to outclass it. Some products are inherently iconic and some designers inherently stupid (plenty of those here at university)(smart designers are those who know they're stupid and take steps to insure themselves against their own stupidity)(From the Making of Zeiss Ikon on consumer feedback: "To our surprise, they clearly favored the one of our design alternatives which we considered the most conservative, the one with the least appeal.")(Yes, you know nothing.)(But the university here produces design bigots as fast as they enroll. These will go on to make the Leica M5's of the world.)

 

So I suppose I do not take gear advice as much as I observe people's reaction to owning and using them and then forming my own conjectures.

 

But as far as advice in general goes, I think I'm persuaded not so much by the person who dispenses it, but by

 

a) how original and personal the arguments are, and

b) the evidence presented.

 

It's easy to discern if a person has given much thought to any piece of advice. You know he hasn't when he's saying the same thing everyone else is with more or less the same words. It's all just lemming-like regurgitation of conventional wisdom. Good thinking is always new thinking. Or at least it comes across as fresh and new because it has been infused with that person's particular...eh...particularness.

[dan_fromm2]

Roger, some years ago I published a book review that said, in essence: "All of the facts asserted in this book that I checked are not so. Do not buy this book. If you must buy it, don't open it. If you must open it, don't read the text, just enjoy the pretty pictures. If you know enough to protect yourself from its many errors, you don't need it. If you don't know enough to protect yourself from its many errors, run away from it."

 

All this applies to much of the information offered on web sites. Major exceptions are scans of instruction manuals.

 

Otherwise, I'm with Vivek. I don't delude myself that I can always tell excrement from shoe polish, but by and large I make my own decisions anyway. I try to reason from first, sometimes second, principles as expounded by a few trusted authors, e.g., A. A. Blaker. I take nearly everything on web sites with a healthy dose of salt; not that everything posted on them is wrong, but too much is. Even when the facts are right, judgements expressed often reflect, um, hidden prejudices or undisclosed ignorance.

 

Regards,

 

Dan

[MTC Photography]

Chasseur d'Image test reports,Color foto test reports, Popular Photography test reports, manufacturer's MTF charts.

[peter_yankin]

I follow the Gospel Of Photo.net Leica Forum in reference to taking advice: First, it's crucial to check the person's photo.net gallery to see if they have any pictures posted. If they don't, it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are poseurs, charlatans, lousy photographers and can't know a whit about cameras and lenses or practically anything else. If they do have photos posted, then they must be honest if they say they made the photos with a Leica, because anyone who posts pictures is honest. So it's ok to take their advice, but only if it agrees with what I already think. If it doesn't, then a second look at their photos will always reveal that they are awful photographers, and therefore can't know a whit about cameras and lenses or practically anything else.

[Brad_]

Nobody on photonet, unless they have photos I can look at and assess.

[john_brewton]

Roger, I take the advice of two professionals I know very well and my friends who are professional in their approach, even though classified as "amateur" by some, to making images and using equipment which suits their style.

John