Gear!!

Why are so many of us so obsessed with the gear we have and the gear we want to have? Half the Flickr profile pages list all the cameras, lenses and other stuff the photographer toats around. Some of those lists are pretty damn impressive and make me drool. My old Nikon d50 is a perfectly adequate camera; I certainly haven’t gotten to the point where it can’t keep up to my skills as a photogorapher. I have to admit, however, that I dream about having a D300 or even a D3 (I’m a Nikon guy; we all know Canons are crap).

The same goes for lenses. I’ve got five very adequate lenses. I do mostly landscape and portrait work. I’m not shooting rabbits half a mile away at midnight or the hairs on a fly’s ass. Still, I want, want, want some of those sexy fast, long and macro lenses most of the pros have. Don’t even get me started on tripods, camera bags, back packs, rain gear and high capacity memory cards.

Will I be a better photographer if I have that D3 with a sexy fast lens up to my eye? Uh, well, maybe not… But that fact doesn’t keep me from lusting for that kind of gear. I think it’s a guy thing. “What’s ya shooting with?” My current answer, “Nikon D50,” only gets a barely noticeable nod from another serious photographer. If I could answer, with a very casual tone as if its no big deal at all, “oh, just a Nikon D3,” the other guy would whistle, immediately feel inadequate and intimidated by my primo gear and maybe even piss his pants. What a rush that would be!

Guys, including me, love gear, particular brand name gear with numbers and slashes and letters in the name. Whether its lawnmowers, rifles, fishing rods, tool boxes, chain saws, bowling balls, audio equiment, golf clubs, tires, televisions, GPS units, cell phones, cars, or, best of all, pickup trucks, those letters and slashes and numbers let us quickly sort out who are the winners with the really boss stuff and who are the losers stuck with that pitiful, plastic budget crap.

The truth is usually the actual difference in utility between that top of the line Ecletrix S9000x and the entry level Ecletrix E90 is very little. It’s also true the pro can run rings around you using that crap budget gear even if you use the   “highest rated” BLT/19000 super-titanium, triple coated, digital, lazer, hemi-headed gear that lists for just under half the GDP of Iceland. Use the best golf clubs in the world and Tiger Woods will beat you with a coke bottle. Send me out with a really good pro photographer – me with a D3 and my choice of top lenses and  the pro with a hundred dollar point and shoot. She’s going to come back with much better photographs than I am. Gear is great. I love gear! I want the greatest gear there is. But the secret of good photography isn’t in the gear, not the camera body and not the lens; its in the eye, that one damn piece of gear I will never be able to upgrade… But I don’t care. Only a handful of you out there can tell I’m at best an average photographer, the rest of you I can dazzle with my bullshit and intimidate with my gear (as soon as I can afford it…!