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Comment by master_crab | Hacker News Reader

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master_crab·

There’s a saying in the photography world:

”The best camera is the one you have on you”

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> ”The best camera is the one you have on you”

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Jarvis

Which only holds true if you don't care much about the result.

I've seen people trying to take photos at an airshow using their phone camera. A small black dot in the centre of frame, rendered as an Impressionist oil smudge by post-processing. Was that worth even trying?

The best camera+lens combo is the one suited to the scene. Anything else isn't.

The point is: who cares what the “best” camera is if one doesn’t have it with them to take a photo of the fleeting moment anyway?

But if you snap that pic, but never use it for anything because it looks slightly weird ... then you as well might not have the camera.

I always take a few snaps at events like that - not to capture the picture, but to capture the moment in my “digital memory” - if I’m on the ball, I later get some of the “official photos” and add those; but the phone camera snaps remind me that I was there, which turns out to be surprisingly useful.

I feel it’s still better than nothing, hence the saying holds true for me. “Best” does not imply “good”.

Not really, because the scene you want to capture is there at that moment and probably wouldn’t be there anymore if you went back to the apartment/hotel/camera store and swapped out for a technically better kit. That’s what the “best camera” saying is about.

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