If you are into photography you soon realise that there are two schools of photographers. The first school is into photography to take photos. They are interested in camera gear but only as a means of taking photographs.This group is a very small group in the photographer universe. The second group are the so called "gearheads" and they dominate the photographer universe. They are into camera gear and many suffer from "gas"-gear acquisition syndrome.
If you write a photography blog and you write about camera gear the readers come flocking. Write solely about photos or devote your blog to great photography and you will have a much smaller following.
A great little,free,online photography magazine from NZ devoted to Australian/NZ photography has just folded after 5 years because it can no longer attract enough readers and advertisers who are only interested in photographs.Their lament is that if they turned it into a gear/gas magazine they would be thriving-but that's not what they want to do.
You can even see this phenomenon in the best photography blog-Macfilos.See-MACFILOS
When Macfilos editor Mike Evans posts a camera gear story-particularly about Fuji cameras -his readership goes up significantly.
Mike walks a fine line trying to balance the content of his site between gear stories and more interesting general interest stories. Macfilos is not a commercial site so whilst he appreciates having good readership numbers he is not driven to maximise them.
The sad part is that so many enthusiasts devote so much time and money reading about the latest gear and looking for the latest camera which will magically open the Pandora's box of brilliant photography for them when they could be taking good photos with modest gear or the gear they already own.
You often read that such and such a new camera is "ideal for street photography".
The above "street" photo was taken 12 years ago in Malaysia with a Leica Digilux1-a very odd camera with a very underwhelming specification. See specs at Digilux 1 It may have a very modest pixel count and a sensor with very limited sensitivity by today's standards but it still was capable of taking good photos. See also Three days in China
Great gear is great but it is not the whole story by any means.If you want to take a good photograph it’s about the moment and the light. It has nothing to do with your equipment .
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