On Sat, October 11, 2008 16:37, Robert Earnest wrote: > Now, to address another matter, there is always someone on the set that > has > better gear than you do. That is because they listened to their parents > and > went for a career in a field that allows them to afford good camera > equipment. Most photographers can't afford to always have the latest and > greatest. Maybe in the beginning when you have no kids, no mortgage and no > bills but as soon as you grow up, you will be shooting with whatever was > the > best you could afford when you were a kid. It doesn't matter. If you > really > really need something, you will eventually get it. (not before losing > Aston > Martin as a client though.) I'm one of the huge batch of software engineers with expensive photo equipment. We got into digital early because it wasn't scary (in my case I was already scanning film and doing digital printing in the mid 1990s), and had the money to get into DSLRs fairly early. (In my case I got my first SLR with the first few paychecks from my first software job, when I was 15, in 1969). Most of us don't have the *top* equipment though; I don't know any D3 or 1DsIII users, lots of the cheaper ones, one Canon 5D, and I just bought a D700 (a significant stretch; I couldn't consider a D3). And *none* of us have medium-format digital gear. Well, one, but she (Sarah Thompson) is a real artistic photographer who still works in software, not so much a hobbyist like me. Dentists, now, dentists tend to have a lot of expensive camera equipment. > It should be mentioned that marrying well is an effective option... My wife is a writer, that approach seems to be working pretty well for her :-). > One last thing. I could have shot probably 90% of everything I ever shot > in > my career with a 35mm, 85mm and a 180mm lens on a 35mm camera or its > equivalent in your chosen format. > I would however choose a 24mm lens over the 35mm lens (my all time > favorite) > because you can crop to 35mm with it. Now we are at 93%. Could you have a successful career in your area *without* doing the 10% of the shots that need something more exotic, though? I very likely did 90% of my shots with my Leica when I had that and a Pentax Spotmatic, and I had 35, 50, and 90mm Summicrons for the Leica, not even a 135. I just dropped back to having nothing wider than a 24mm for the first time in 14 years. So far, certainly not a problem. (Went from DX back to full-frame, which I had never expected to do. For me it's the low-light ability that drives it. I'm very amused that the big casualty of moving back to full-frame is a *loss* of wideangle capability; I sold 17mm and 20mm primes when I got the 12-24/4 Tokina for my Dx.) (Well, I've got an 8mm fisheye, but that's not *wide*, it's *round*.) -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
