There are two axes for types of people in photography: technicians and artists. Some go all in on the technical aspect of photography, obsessing over numbers, features and functionality. Others see photographic equipment as a tool for art, they don't care about what they have in their hands, as long as it is in their hands when they need it to. All the best photographers you might have heard of fall on the quadrant of "competent enough to understand the mechanics of photography but cares more about getting the shot". You can use camera equipment from the 60s and still take amazing, beautiful, evocative pictures. Even an out of focus, blurry, improperly exposed picture can be amazing.

The "problem" is that the technical features of these tiny, amazing machines can be quantified and argued over ad nauseam. Does it matter if a lens has worse fall off than another? If the chromatic aberration is high? What about the pinchushion distortion? If you are gonna print the picture in a fashion magazine, yes. Does it matter if your shutter speed is 2000 instead of 4000? Does it matter if your lens is f/1.2 instead of f/1.8? If you're a wildlife or sports photographer, maybe. But if you have a camera on you, that's good enough, and you have the basic understanding of photography, you can capture an event that would otherwise be lost to time. Cameras in cellphones have destroyed the market for point and shoot cameras, but brought the advent of completely popularizing photography at a scale that could never have been believed before.

Of course this is no different to cars, or computers, or bikes, or...

When I was in Japan, in America-mura in Osaka, I saw an exhibit by a local skateboarding-culture photographer. I had been carrying around a Nikon CoolPix point-and-shoot with which to take tourist pictures.

It turned out that the photographer himself had been hanging around his own exhibit, and we got to talking briefly about my visit and my interest in his work (his English was pretty good). He pointed to the camera and said "Can I see?" I let him leaf through my camera's memory filled with photos from the trip, random things that caught my interest. He handed me the camera back and said "These are some good shots."

I was really chuffed to hear this pro compliment my random tourist shots. He must have liked my eye and my composition instincts because the camera was rinky-dink by pro standards and didn't allow me fine-grained control over exposure, aperture size, etc.

I know this sounds a bit like a "things that didn't happen for $400, Alex" story, but it totally did happen. Maybe he was flattering me, I dunno. But it helped me appreciate casual photography with cheap equipment as something with its own aesthetic merit.

My brief time in Japan was amazing all around.

He liked your photos because for serious photography the technical side is not as important as the subject matter or artistic, compositional, or journalistic aspects of the work.

The technical side only needs to be "good enough" and the photo can still be great. The artistic sides have to be great to make a great photo.

The whole "technician" side of photography often loses sight of composition & subject in the quest to have the perfect aperture/ISO/shutter speed and get maximum sharpness.

There’s being nice and then there’s just being nice. Sounds like he’s a nice guy and he also meant what he said.

For what it’s worth, I find it very believable because it matches my experience of positive pro/amateur interactions in other fields from both sides. Something about the shots signaled to him “this person gets it”. It’s not that it’s pro level, but it seems possible to multiply what’s already there by time and intensity and get something that is pro. This is very different from someone who wants to talk about the best lens caps, and you look at their photos and it feels like they really missed something.

i really enjoyed this post.

i have been pretty reluctant to take photographs in general. i do enjoy a nice photo for sure, and i have taken a few that i actually like too.

> [I]f you have a camera on you, that's good enough, and you have the basic understanding of photography, you can capture an event that would otherwise be lost to time.

i like this thought. and i will perhaps try to take more photos.

> Others see photographic equipment as a tool for art, they don't care about what they have in their hands, as long as it is in their hands when they need it to.

As a cinematographer/photographer…ehhhh yes and no. I care a lot what I’m using because it controls what I can capture. I’m fine using a $300 canon rebel or a $30k red package with Cooke glass. But I definitely care which I’m using depending on the objective of my work. I need to know - and again I care - what sensor and codec I’m using, because it has a big impact on how and what I can shoot. There are some things a cheap rebel with a cheap kit lens simply won’t let me do.

Being a “technician” or an “artist” is hardly so stark. You have to be both to be good at your craft. It’s a tool, but one that I have to understand the capabilities and limitations, both of which I need to weigh when planning my “art.” Just as a painter needs to choose their paints and brushes.

That's is why I called it two separate axes and not two ends in a single axis. You need a base level of technical competency to understand what the limitations of your equipment are to leverage it to the fullest extent and avoid doing things that will just plain not work, and the technical features are needed to accomplish specific things, but artistry is till required. Feature films have been captured on iPhone (you can say that is little more than a stunt, but it still exists).

Not everyone is filming Barry Lyndon with f/.95 aperture in candle-lit scenes. Watching older films where both the glass and the film were subpar compared to what's available today, where the grain was high, the focus puller wasn't at the top of their game leaving characters somewhat out of focus (when looking closely, maybe not noticeable at 480p or 720p), but the films are still enjoyable. Parts of The Batman were filmed on a Helios 40-2, an objectively terrible lens when it comes to it's optical characteristics, but it can evoke a look that you can't otherwise get which helps with the mood the cinematographer was trying to capture. You won't be able to capture the vast expanses of night time scenes of Nope (filmed as day for night with infrared cameras) with subpar equipment. You need full sharpness for easier rotoscoping when dealing with VFX. You want the best cameras available to capture miniatures of spaceships like in 2001 or Interstellar to make people believe these are real spaceships. You can leverage a new technology in a new way, like 28 Days Later used new at the time digital cameras (that would nowadays be considered subpar) for easier application of effects like undercranking and lower production costs, or how they used 360 shutters in Collateral. But you can also make a film like The Man From Earth that was shot in a single room, with a bunch of actors and an camera that was average at the time, or Saving Private Ryan simply undercranking and using really short shutterns to ensure that the beach landing scene was crisp through and through. Everything Everywhere All At Once didn't have Marvel-budget level gear, but they still made one of the best movies of the past few years.

I don't fully disagree with what you're saying: better tools expand the envelope of what you can accomplish. But technology is in service of the art, not the other way around (unless you're producing marketing material for the manufacturer, I guess ^_^).

I love combing over features, and learn about the mechanics of these amazing machines, and the theory of the physics of light (even knowing how it works, it is still feels like magic that you can take a full picture of an object that is partially obstructed as long as you can make that foreground element blurred enough). I'm a shit artist, but I trust one with a point and shoot to make something better than I can with my DSLRs. I can't wait to see what new story telling tricks people will come up with new tech, like Nope did.

I mean yes, you technically put them on separate axes, but there was a ton of implication in your comment about an either/or mentality and that one is superior to the other. Just wanted to provide a soft push back there and provide a little context for why. I get what you’re saying though!

No hard feelings! It's important to have a nuanced view of the subject. I guess there was an implied pushback from me to the very common undercurrent of "number chasers" that dominate online discourse, because that can absolutely discourage someone that wants to learn unless they buy the latest gear of whatever line the manufacturers are launching this week, when they would be better served spending an afternoon eBay diving looking for used gear. But without that context I might seem wishy washy and disregarding of the amazing technical achievements made by countless people, from the manufacturers to the large teams of technicians bringing the production's vision to fruition.

Yeah, people in forums can have a nasty tendency to want to flex. Either about what they know or what they own. It’s very easy to find people discouraging others. Luckily, I find most of us that actually do this for a living tend to tell people “get a basic DSLR, a nifty fifth, and go to town.” At least that’s my experience haha

Part of the article's characterization of that camera as a toy seemed to be how simple it was to operate and designed, and that's what allowed a non-photographer astronaut to make use of it, or the engineers at NASA to remix it days before the launch for their priorities. So at least it makes some case for the value of 'toys' while it might simultaneously look down a little at them. The toy-like approachability and simplicity is what enabled these people to play with it and have space photography taken seriously as a result.

Well the idea they might look down at John Glenn or think a fancy camera might be too challenging is absurd too.

The article misses that John Glenn was himself an engineer who had an exceedingly good grasp of operating exceptionally complex machinery. Of course he could figure out how to use any camera on the market.

There are lots of people in photography who are not technically inclined but pretend they are cause they can use a camera, after all being technically inclined is not what makes you good at photography.

It's totally possible John Glenn & the other engineers bought a whole bunch of cameras and did exposure tests and ergonomic tests in terms how easy their modifications would be and then selected this camera as superior to what the Petapixel guys might have thought was the superior prosumer camera of the late 50s.

>bring technically inclined is not what makes you good at photography

I think you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who asserts that is the primary skill/inclination needed to be a good photographer, but as I said, in another comment, I wouldn’t necessarily frame being technical as useless or particularly secondary. It is as integral as “having an eye,” which frankly is just another way of saying somebody understands the technical aspects of how to frame a photo, even if they don’t know how to articulate it (which they will eventually have to if they actually want to be good at photography). Even affordable prosumer digital cameras require some technical proficiency if you want to get the best results out of them.

I have a $500 camera and a $5000 camera. They have a fair few difference, but by far the most important differentiating factor is one:

The expensive camera has more buttons.

That's literally it, the expensive camera lets me take photos without taking my eye away from the viewfinder, the cheaper camera has me fiddle with the menus to change things (I've missed photo opportunities because of this).

If you aren't a professional photographer, the RX100 is a great camera. You generally don't need the expensive one. Hell, I've taken many of my favorite photos with my phone.