The right tool for the job.
Photography can be very elitist, and it's a damn shame, but there are also many people accused of elitism when they are simply just trying help others.
Facebook is a great place to share and learn about photography, but my gosh there are a lot of keyboard warriors, and perhaps I am one. But I like to think that I am not elitist, and whenever I write it is only with the view of helping or advising someone, after all, I teach photography! Why would I want to dissuade anyone from it?
On one of the many Facebook groups I frequent, today I read a post about person who wanted to know how they could set their camera to lock focus when they half press the shutter button. Most cameras do this by default, infact I do not know of any that don’t, but it is a fair enough question if you can't quite get it to work because your new (which this person admitted they were) maybe you're just not holding it right, or maybe you have changed another setting that you might not have realized (Such as changing from single shot to continuous, which on some cameras would affect the focusing).
The camera in question was a Nikon D800. At the time of writing, a second hand Nikon d800 (Body only) is going for over £800 on amazon. Not too long ago they were going for more than £2000. Thats a lot of money to spend on a camera, by anyone's standard, including myself and photography is what I do for a living!
Before I go any further, please don't think me an elitist or jealous. People have the right to buy whatever they want to buy and for whatever reason.
But to buy a professional grade camera for that much money when you don’t have a clue how to use it? Something bugs me about that, and at first I was annoyed at myself, because as I said above everyone has the right to buy what they want to buy. But nonetheless this annoyed me.
And I am not the only one, people were writing comments asking why she would buy such a camera when she was only a novice, and of course some people were quite rude, but most people who were asking the question were being quite civil about the matter. (I think it's good to also note that these people were also answering her question at the same time). But as always with facebook, there were another group who decided that these people were bullies and had no right to question the camera she chose to use. But are they really bullies? I don’t think so.
You see the thing is with photography, and every professional will agree with me on this, and so will most amateurs as well (Not to mention all of my students haha!), we know that it is not the camera that makes a quality photograph, but the person holding the camera. And to illustrate this further, you can give a £2000 camera to someone who has no idea, and they will take no better photos than they could achieve on their phone. Give a terrible camera to a professional, and they will take still take a professional quality photograph. Just check out this video by Digital Review featuring the fantastic fashion photographer Lara Jade. They gave her a cheap toy camera and still ended up with shots that could have been on the cover of last month's Vogue!
So you might be saying at this point “Well Dale you have a point, but at least if they buy the expensive camera now they won't have to buy another when they learn more later on”. In some cases you might be right, and I will get off my soapbox in those cases and carry on, but I am willing to bet you that in most cases you're wrong. You see the problem with an professional camera is that it is designed for professionals, and what I mean by that is that the camera is designed to be used by someone who already knows exactly what they are doing, so it does nothing to help someone understand how the camera works.
Real life example: My Sony a57 is an entry level SLT (SLR) camera, with that in mind, it has extensive helps pages and walkthroughs, hints and tips and guides, built into the camera. If at any point you do not know how to work the camera, just press the little “?” button and a handy little guide will come up and explain it for you. Conversely, I have yet to find any function on my Nikon D600 that helps explain a function beyond a few bits of jargon that even sometimes I don't understand! As a teacher of photography, particularly to adult learners, I am always meeting people who own SLR cameras, and complain that they were a waste of money because they can’t work it, or they feel that they can get better photos out of their phones! And what happens next? They put the SLR away, they give up learning more, because it’s too difficult, too fiddly. If you don't get joy out of something you're less likely to do it right? This is what bugs me about the original post to Facebook, there's a good chance they if she can’t learn how to use that D800 soon, she may just give up on photography all together because she found it frustrating and time consuming. That would be a shame, because photography is AWESOME. I bet if I gave her my Sony a57 and showed her the help button, she would come back a week later saying what an awesome camera it is (as a few of my friends who are now into photography have).
So in conclusion, while I am only too aware that there is indeed a lot of elitism in photography, there are also people who really are just trying to help. If you starting out in photography PLEASE don't just go and buy the most expensive camera you can afford, it won't guarantee you top quality photos. Instead, spend that money on some local evening classes, or a one day workshop, and go learn how to take an awesome photo on ANY camera, because as Lara Jade proved in the video I linked to above, IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW GOOD THE CAMERA IS!!! It matters how good you are. And if you really have a passion for photography, it will shine through whether you're working with 30 Megapixels, or 3.
