To put it short: Photography is the art of reading light. It never meant to become a camera war. Photography enthusiast and camera geek are two different species that has no direct relation one to each other.
Many smartphone geek compare camera quality on flagship phones, sometime even reach a long and tiring argument, but actually how many of them truly know how to use or will use their smartphone camera optimally?
Same to camera users, many of them argue which one is the best camera brand, what these brands can do, what other brands can not do, and even worse, some people start to judge people’s work based on which camera brand they use (!). If you ever heard one your friend saying “Actually I like his work, too bad he use camera brand X”, then your friend is truly a camera geek that perhaps has no idea what art of photography is. Fortunately, most people around me are type of person who judge photo based on photo quality itself, not camera brands 🙂
I believe any modern cameras, either it is Pocket, DSLR, mirrorless, Micro Four Third, APSC, Full Frame, Medium Format, or even smartphone’s camera are good enough to do most of street photography projects.
Truth to be told, we do not need super machine like Flagship Sony Alpha A9 or Fujifilm GFX50 to produce artsy and pleasing images. Art in photography is all about content inside photo, not how great or expensive camera we use to capture moment. Yes, it is true that more expensive cameras give us easier way to create magnificent result, however, it is always how good a photographer creatively using light to capture scene rather than how good a camera sensor is.
I used to believe that if I buy a certain expensive model camera then I will get powerful inspiration to start shooting, and think that all of my photos will automatically have pleasing result. It is simply wrong. If I have to put it into number, I think to create a beautiful images 90% came from photographer skill, and the rest is sensor’s camera quality.
Let’s think about this:
– When people see a beautiful image, their first question would be: What camera the photographer use to capture it? They do not ask who the photographer.
– When people listen a beautiful song, their first question would be: Who is the singer? They do not ask which microphone brand the singer use.
Art in photography is the result of photographer’s vision. Result of creativity. Result of hard work. Camera sensor is only a tool that help them to read and record light. To help photographer put their vision and imagination into reality and share it to others so anyone can understand how photographer see the world through his mind.
That is all about my thought of camera is only a tool. Expensive camera will help us achieve great result, but, the main part is we need to learn a lot about the art of photography itself and never rely on high end gears to inspire us shooting out there.
Choose your camera wisely (read here), user experience in real life and the way to operate camera is more important than the image quality itself. Choose a camera that gives you feeling of joy to use every time you take it out for shooting.
Additional notes: All portrait photos inside this post taken by my old Samsung Galaxy S7 when I did a little street portrait project with my friends on this weekend.
Keep shooting and stay inspired,
Nico Harold