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Comment by kergonath | Hacker News Reader

Even if it were the case, what is wrong with that? I mean, we can buy fancy cars without having a background in engineering, right? All the sneering about people being bad photographers and not needing the latest gear is out of touch. Average photographers benefit immensely from fast autofocus with full frame coverage, better sensors and better optics that make taking pictures in difficult conditions easier.

Besides, some people like the technical optical engineering aspect of it and are happy to follow the latest developments in the same way that some people feel the urge to read articles on the latest HPC Xeon. Gatekeeping and condescension is completely unwarranted.

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Average photographers can certainly benefit from better gear to a degree. But for many people (myself included) a $300 lens will work as well (or even better) than a $3000 one. Which I think is the point the original commenter was making.

The sneering is pretty typical for any hobby that lumps practitioners and collectors under the same heading. The former group tends to see the gear as mere tools, to be used as needed to achieve some other end. For the latter group the gear is the whole thing - or perhaps talking about the gear.

Neither is bad, but it would probably work better to call the hobbies by different names. Perhaps "photographers" and "camera collectors" or something. But then, being a collector doesn't have quite the same cachet as being an artist.

> Average photographers can certainly benefit from better gear to a degree. But for many people (myself included) a $300 lens will work as well (or even better) than a $3000 one. Which I think is the point the original commenter was making.

I agree somewhat, which is why I mostly use a cheap lens, and an ancient EOS 60D. However, I think the $3,000 lens is a red herring. The vast majority of lenses sold are kit lenses or cheap plastic. Because whilst there is an awful lot of average photographers, not all of them are millionaires. Now, to actual millionaires $3,000 are probably worth less than $300 for me, so I don't see how I would have a moral high ground.

Honestly, this is a made up problem. Some people prefer working on composition, some are better at capturing subtle lights, and some have a technical mind. These people still buy camera and take pictures, as a hobby. So why wouldn't they be called "hobbyist photographers" like the rest of us? And why does it have any importance whatsoever?

The expensive lenses are usually big and heavy. If you don't need that degree of sharpness, then it's potentially a worse tool than a lighter (and cheaper) lens.

>So why wouldn't they be called "hobbyist photographers" like the rest of us?

I feel like I explained my thoughts on that in my previous comment. Basically if you're in it for the love of the gear rather than to make photographs that's fine, but your hobby is collecting rather than photography. Or, to put it another way, photography gear rather than photo-making.

>why does it have any importance whatsoever?

Sometimes the photo-makers get annoyed at being lumped in with the gear collectors. And a fair number of people get taken in reading the gearhead commentary and end up buying expensive lenses that won't actually help that person take better photos.

> I feel like I explained my thoughts on that in my previous comment.

Yes, you did. Sorry, it shouldn't have sounded so personal. My real problem is with the community in general.

> Basically if you're in it for the love of the gear rather than to make photographs that's fine, but your hobby is collecting rather than photography.

The thing is, it is a spectrum between pinhole photographers and gear heads. There are different optima for different people along the way, but fundamentally they all do the same thing: taking pictures. So where do you draw the line, and who gets to choose who is branded a legitimate photographer instead of some weirdo with too much money?

I have never seen any evidence that "collectors" (in the sense of people who buy modern gear without taking any picture with it; there are plenty of legitimate collectors of old cameras) really are that common, or any more common than soccer moms who buy a camera to collect dust. Every time they are mentioned it is as bogeymen on a photography forum. It is puzzling that a community would show so extreme sentiments towards one of its subsets. And I am a railway modeller, so I am not stranger to strongly opinionated hobbyists.

> And a fair number of people get taken in reading the gearhead commentary and end up buying expensive lenses that won't actually help that person take better photos.

Sure, that is a problem for some people who are eager to give themselves the right tools and get to overspend. And to be honest most of us are willing to fall into that trap.

>it is a spectrum

Yeah, for sure, I didn't intend to make it sound like as much of a clear cut dichotomy as I ended up doing.

>who is branded a legitimate photographer instead of some weirdo with too much money?

You ask the Internet Photography Police to render a verdict, of course! But yeah, it's not a clearcut distinction in most cases.

Yah I should have called out that there are different interests and Photography is very much composed of:

- Photographers - Modern Gear collectors - Vintage Gear collectors

You can have a little bit of each of these 3 you're interested in, and you won't necessarily always have the same interest in each area.

But people who are 100% interested in one of the gear collecting aspects are pretty common and are very far from the artistic side.

I think the problem with enthusiasm for unnecessary consumer goods is the environmental impact.

I do agree consumers don’t deserve condescension for geeking about technical details, but I still see it as at least ironic when somebody buys an overengineered product.

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