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Comment by zwkrt | Hacker News Reader

Some photography wisdom:

  * To take more interesting photographs, put yourself in more interesting places
  * The best zoom lens is a good pair of sneakers
  * The best camera is the one you have with you
  * It’s easy to delete extra pictures, but it’s impossible to recreate a moment.
  * The pictures are there, and you just take them.

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These reasons are why my Canon 7D sees a fraction of the use that my Ricoh GR III sees. A camera small enough to fit in my pockets with a superb image quality and a stabilizer that makes up several stops so no flash is needed.

I started taking photography serious about a year ago, and as I struggle with the last part, I tend to overdo 1. Additionally, as I do Deep Astro and Night Photography, I upgraded for better Low Light Performance as a lot of pictures just turned out barely okay due to camera limitations. However, I got some nice Aurora shots already, so I am quite happy with that.

> The best zoom lens is a good pair of sneakers

I don't like this one, because it implies that you never want to change focal length for artistic/aesthetic effects, but this is one of the most important characteristics you can change!

I do think it's good advice for folks just getting into photography that you don't have to have every lens to get close to the image you want.

yeah its very easy to become gear obsessed and a collector thinking that there will be utility

lighting > lens > body

in that order

100%

Well, one could certainly phrase such an advice also in some non-misleading way.

It's a cliched piece of advice.

It has a good nugget of truth in it, but it's not meant to contain all the relevant info you need about purchasing lenses.

It doesn’t imply that at all. Best does not mean only.

The "best" does not work very often though.

You won't be able to capture the cathedral interior / room full of people with a non-wide lens because you simply can't back off through the wall.

You can't capture birds pictures with a wide angle, because "sneaker method" will just chase them away.

You can't just go closer to a person to get a headshot portrait with a wide angle because the perspective will distort their face to an ugly degree.

For many years I lived with a fixed focal length camera (Fuji X100) and it "sneaker method" did not work very well.

> You can't capture birds pictures with a wide angle, because "sneaker method" will just chase them away.

True.

On the other hand one should perhaps not discount a packet of seeds/bird feeder as a great zoom lens. (ie: compose/pose the scene, not just the shot).

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