Cameras

Canon G9 and S90, Olympus E-500 and E-620.

Stuff I hate

Marathons, Apple (the greedy corporation, not the fruit), tattoos, vegetarianism/veganism.

My Photography Manifesto

(1) All different sensor sizes have their place. You can do stuff with “full frame sensors” that you can’t do with 4/3 sensors. At the same time, the tiny sensors in compact cameras can produce good images and one shouldn’t look down upon them.

(2) People shouldn’t get all worked up over what brand of camera they use. Camera manufacturers are all just big profit-hungry corporations. And there isn’t a whole lot of difference in image quality between brands. That said, I find it sad that Olympus, which manufactures the DSLRs I use, keeps losing market share to Canon and Nikon and even to Sony.

(3) In the future, the SLR concept will be obsolete, replaced by cameras with electronic viewfinders and contrast-detection autofocus. It’s only a matter of time before EVFs give you a better view than an optical viewfinder, and Panasonic has recently made great strides in making contrast-detection autofocus as fast as the phase-detection autofocus in DSLRs. Despite Panasonic’s early success, Canon and Nikon will soon come out with EVF cameras and dominate the market based on their brand identity and superior high ISO performance.

(4) Photography is a bad way to try to earn a living. According to the U.S. government, the median salary for photographers is only $26,170. Wedding photography is the only genre of photography in which it’s likely that one could earn a decent income.

(5) Photography is not a hobby for poor people. You don’t necessarily need to be Donald Trump rich to do photography, but you should have at least a decent middle class income, or have parents who can buy your camera stuff for you. Theoretically, you can take photos with just a $150 p&s camera, but then you will see popular photos on flickr that you couldn’t possible have done with your inexpensive equipment, and you will feel the need to buy more camera stuff.

Do not borrow money on your credit cards in order to buy camera stuff. It’s a very bad idea.

If you’re looking for a creative hobby, and you can’t afford camera stuff, I recommend oil painting. Besides being a lot less expensive than photography, you’ll get more respect as a fine artist, and there are fine artist oil painters who actually make a living from it. In contrast, practically nobody is going to make a living as a fine artist photographer. See point #4 above.