Just in my previous blog post, One of the questions photographers get asked all the time is: “What camera do you use?”
It’s understandable. Photography and videography are unusual creative jobs because there’s a very obvious piece of technology sitting between the person and the finished work. A painter has brushes, a guitarist has a guitar, and I have an unnecessarily expensive collection of black boxes and glass.
And yes, the kit matters.
But probably not as much as you might think.
You absolutely need the tools
There’s a slightly tired phrase in photography that “the camera doesn’t matter.”
I’ve never completely agreed with that.
Try photographing a bird in flight at 200 metres with an iPhone. Try shooting a dark wedding reception with a slow lens and a camera that struggles at higher ISO. Try delivering sharp commercial images for a huge advertising display from a tiny, heavily compressed file.
Equipment gives us capabilities.
A long lens lets me reach something I physically can’t get close to. A fast lens lets me work when the light disappears. Modern autofocus lets me concentrate on composition while the camera deals with keeping a moving subject sharp. Good lighting equipment lets me create light when the available light is awful.
For video, the list gets even longer. Stabilisation, microphones, drones, monitors, lighting, storage, batteries and enough cables to restrain a medium-sized elephant.
We genuinely cannot do certain jobs without the right equipment.
So the kit matters.
The question is: where does the kit stop and the photographer begin?
A £5,000 camera doesn't know where to stand
This is the bit that's much harder to put on a specification sheet.
A camera doesn't know that moving two metres to the left will clean up the background.
It doesn't know that the light coming through a window will look better if you turn the subject slightly.
It doesn't know when a nervous person needs thirty seconds of conversation before you point a camera at them.
It doesn't know that the photograph you planned isn't actually the photograph that's happening in front of you.
And it certainly doesn't know when to shut up and wait.
That's where experience comes in.
I've accumulated a fair amount of professional camera equipment over the years, and there are things I can do today that simply wouldn't have been technically possible with some of my earlier kit.
But I also know that if you handed my current equipment to me when I was first starting out, I wouldn't suddenly have produced the work I produce now.
I'd have been the same inexperienced photographer.
Just with a considerably more expensive camera.
The diminishing returns of expensive equipment
There's also a funny thing that happens as you move up through professional equipment.
The differences become smaller.
Going from a genuinely unsuitable camera to a capable one can transform what you're able to do. Going from a very good professional camera to an even newer very good professional camera might give you better autofocus, another stop of usable ISO or a few more megapixels.
Useful? Absolutely.
Transformational? Not always.
The same applies to lenses.
I love good glass. There's something wonderful about a beautiful lens, and I'm certainly not going to pretend I don't enjoy using expensive equipment.
But clients don't look at a photograph and say:
"Fantastic use of an RF L-series lens there, John."
At least I hope they don't.
They care about the image.
Reliability might matter more than image quality
There's another side to professional kit that doesn't get talked about nearly as much.
Reliability.
For me, that's arguably where professional equipment really earns its keep.
If I'm photographing a wedding, an event or a commercial production, I can't tell everyone to come back next Tuesday because something stopped working.
That's why there are multiple camera bodies. Multiple lenses. Spare batteries. Spare cards. Backup audio. Backup storage.
The expensive bit isn't necessarily owning equipment capable of making a beautiful photograph.
It's having a system capable of reliably producing that photograph when somebody is paying you to produce it.
That's a very different thing.
Knowing your equipment beats owning more of it
I think there's a point where familiarity becomes more valuable than another upgrade.
If something happens quickly, I don't want to be looking through menus.
I want to know instinctively how my camera will react. I want to know which lens I need before I've opened the bag. I want to know how far I can push a file before the image quality falls apart.
That only comes from using the equipment repeatedly.
The best camera isn't necessarily the one with the highest specification.
Sometimes it's simply the one you know inside out.
So, how important is the kit?
Important enough that I've spent an alarming amount of money on it.
Not important enough that it does the job for me.
Professional equipment expands the range of situations I can work in. It makes difficult photographs easier to achieve. It gives me redundancy when something goes wrong. And sometimes it allows me to create images that genuinely wouldn't be possible with lesser equipment.
But it can't choose the photograph.
It can't build a relationship with the person in front of the camera. It can't recognise a fleeting expression. It can't understand what a client is trying to communicate. And it can't replace years spent making mistakes, learning from them and gradually getting better.
You need the kit to do the job.
But knowing what to do with it, when to use it — and when the equipment isn't actually the answer — is ultimately far more important.
And, inconveniently for those of us who enjoy buying cameras, you can't order that bit online.