Hacker News Reader

Comment by lizknope | Hacker News Reader

I've been taking photos for 35 years and I would say that the camera is the LEAST important part of photography.

Composition and lighting are far more important. For film cameras the lens is far more important than the camera which is mostly just a light tight box. An experienced photographer can still produce amazing images from cheap cameras.

All that said I have thousands of dollars of camera gear. It absolutely helps but if I give it all to a random person on the street they aren't going to instantly become a better photographer.

View on HN

I get why people do this, but I think think you’re massively underplaying the importance of gear. I just can’t take anything like the same kind of pictures with an old iPhone that I can with my 1986 Mamiya 645 and the beautiful old lenses. It opens up huge possibilities for art, with obvious limitations. My expensive DSLR and nice modern lenses opens up other options, more control, more resolution, different feel and a different output.

The truth is that good gear is worthless for somebody who doesn’t know what you’re doing, but it’s essential for a skilled photographer to open up the possibilities and flexibility to get the kind of result they want. It’s not even ‘expensive gear’ - my 645 was only $600 from eBay (and a couple of old lenses only a few hundred) but I’ve taken some great stuff with it and I love the experience and feel of working with film. But it serves a different purpose than my far more expensive DSLR setup, and I still take a lot of everyday photos on my phone.

Nice gear makes using it a pleasure. If you don’t feel encumbered by the gear, you are far more likely to actually use, and thus get good.

Musical instruments, bikes, motorcycles, computers, and everything else imaginable is the same. If only for the feeling that it feels like it helps you, you should get what you want within the restrictions you have.

Yeah, exactly right.

It's very easy to think that gear is important, but the progress in recent years is towards quicker photo taking, which is actually the opposite of what helps me take better photos. I find that a decent quality manual focus camera without a light meter slows me down enough for me to get into the right frame of mind to understand what i'm looking at.

The two "most important" and "debate" jokes of photography that I recall...

The three most important things in photography: the legs of the tripod

New photographers argue Nikon vs Canon. Middling photographers argue Leica vs Hasselblad. Expert photographers argue Gitzo vs Manfrotto.

The camera is definitely not the least important part. Try taking a picture with an iPhone 4 vs an iPhone 14. No matter how well you compose a picture, poor image quality automatically makes it look bad.

https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/22/iphone-photography-award-winn...

The article says nothing about post processing

Are you trying to say that people only post process phone camera images, because that is definitely not the case.

https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/not-about-your-camera.htm#t...

People always downvote these types of comments, but it’s true. I had one of the first generation consumer digital cameras (Sony F717), and I could only rarely get a decent photo out of it. I never once got a “wow” shot or anything worth printing.

A few years later with a Nikon D90 it was possible to get amazing, print-worthy shots by accident… through the window of a moving car!

There is obviously the right tool for the right job, ie. Moving car and you're looking for a clear photo you need a camera that can shoot at a high ISO and produce little noise. But the reality is you are either a poor or lazy photographer. Part of being a good photographer is working within the constraints of the tool that you have at the time.

I had an olympus C-2 Zoom which was dramatically worse than the Sony and it captured many great photos. I can see some good sample photos here ofthe F717 https://onfotolife.com/camera_sample_photos?camera_id=4527&p...

Those are amazing locations in bright sunlight. Most of those pictures are also edited to death. None make me say “wow”.

I had the same experience. At gorgeous locations in good light I could get okay photos — but only with a lot of editing.

Looking through some sample photos [1], I would say the biggest issue with the F717 is the inability to blur the background and isolate the subject. That's more a limitation of the lens than the camera - but since the lens is integrated in the F717 it's totally fair to say it's a limitation of the camera too.

I had a similar issue with a Panasonic micro four-thirds camera where I was just never happy with the photos I got out of it. I much prefered the results I got with my prior inexpensive Canon APS-C DSLR, and the Sony Full Frame mirrorless camera I upraded to afterwards. No doubt a better photographer than myself could have gotten some great photos out of the Panasonic - but yeah for me just upgrading the camera made a big difference in both my own satisfaction and also the feedback I was getting from others.

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/dscf717

Poor example maybe - you can't buy an iPhone 4 anymore. Maybe camera quality mattered when it was current because there were lots of bad cameras around, but now the range is more from "good enough" to "great" and so it doesn't matter so much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o063wC_SNxo

I disagree.

Because different cameras facilitate different types of pictures. Partially through ergonomics, partially through technical capabilities, and partially because these overlap.

An iPhone SE has a different picture making envelope than an 8x10 large format view camera, and both are quite different from the latest full frame DSLR (which offers different ergonomics and capabilities than a similarly sensored mirrorless).

What I would say is that the camera is among the least interesting aspects of a picture…not the least interesting because the color of the photographer’s pants is objectively less interesting.

The focus on cameras is in part because shopping is easier than making pictures.

And the ways in which better cameras are described as better is usually by parroting the marketing points of camera manufacturers…the sharpest of corners won’t make anyone weep.

> The focus on cameras is in part because shopping is easier than making pictures.

I feel like this is a trend in a lot of hobbies. People (myself included) find it really fun to deep dive into research and collecting things related to some hobby they supposedly find interesting. But the actual doing the hobby part is really just some scaffolding to enable that research and collecting.

> ...the camera is the LEAST important part of photography.

Having used a view camera, which really is nothing more than a flexible box, this sentiment resonates with me. But, I can see how different types of camera support types of picture-taking that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

> camera is the LEAST important part of photography.

> Composition and lighting are far more important

yeah a good camera enables more angles/speed and allows more dynamic range or better pictures under low-light conditions.

Good composition and lighting processing is THE most important part of camera design.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com