Best Business Practices for Photographers [20]
Cameras and Optics: Why You Want the Best
There's a reason why top-of-the-line cameras are so expensive—it's because the R&D going into improving the capture capabilities is extremely high, and the number of cameras they can expect to sell using that cutting-edge technology is relatively small. So, they need to spread the cost of bringing that technology to you over the number of new cameras. Of course, you're also underwriting that R&D, which will eventually find its way into prosumer- and consumer-grade equipment.
Consider that today's professional-grade cameras can capture amazing detail and low noise at 800, 1600, and even 3200 ISO. This capability wasn't available even 18 months ago. Back in the days of film, I could use a camera from the 1970s, load in current-generation film, and compete for image quality against a camera produced in the 1990s. Now, a camera that is 18 months to two years old produces significantly poorer-quality images than today's cameras, and that will change again two years from now.
If you're using a camera with a chip that is not capturing the maximum amount of data, and you're covering a news event where the photographer next to you is capturing the maximum amount of data, he is producing images that have more potential than yours. If he's a bit too wide, he can crop in and still have a sizeable image. If you are too wide, you can't. If the photographer is using a camera with a greater latitude than yours, and she's over/under, a usable image can be obtained after the fact. If your camera only shoots in JPEG or the latitude of your camera's chip is one or two generations back, then you're again at a disadvantage. Of course, when everything goes right, you have no worries. It's when you're too wide/bright/dark that you'll need that extra range to make the difference, and with prosumer and consumer cameras, you're limiting yourself beyond what you'd find acceptable if you were shooting film.
One of the bigger mistakes I see a lot of photographers make is that they don't see the value in the pro-line lenses. The best lenses typically have a maximum aperture of f/2.8 or better and are fairly expensive. This isn't a marketing ploy; the more expensive lenses have better optics. So what does this mean? It means the lens was designed for digital, set up so that all the colors focus at the same point in space (previously, this was referred to as apo-chromatic, or APO for short). This was only really seen in Leica and Hasselblad (also known as Zeiss glass), which accounted for the significant quality shift in images produced through that glass and the high price point for those lenses. They met the highest and most stringent standards for optics, and it sure made a visual difference. The top-of-the-line lenses deliver the purest of optics. You might read a review in a photography magazine on the latest lenses, and for the pro-line lenses they'll list "expensive" in the cons section. As a professional, I don't subscribe to this as a con.
Further, stopping into your glass to f/2.8 is going to give you a sharper image than shooting wide open at f/2.8. What I mean is, if you have an 85mm f/2.8 lens and an 85mm f/1.4 lens, when you are at f/2.8 on the former lens, you are wide open, using the edges of the optics to produce the image at f/2.8. When you stop down to f/2.8 from f/1.4, 2+ stops, you are "deep" into the glass, and the resulting images will generally be sharper because you are using more of the center and less of the edges of your optics.
Computers: Desktops, Laptops, and What's Wrong with That Three-Year-Old Computer
What's wrong with that three-year-old desktop computer? For starters, it's slow. Second, its hard drive will most likely crash sooner rather than later. Computers, like cameras, have a fairly short lifecycle. Friends of mine make sport of my desire to have the best and most useful gear and computers. But in the end, I have the tools to do the job, and that's what the client pays for.
* * *