I've always maintained that as a nature photographer, my only tools essential for taking pictures are these: My eyes, an alarm clock, a tripod, and *A* camera. Honestly, when you have the first three, almost any camera will do!
(I specifically put "almost" in there to avoid people pestering me with "so, should I just get a $10 disposable camera? Is that good enough?")
After going through my own period of constantly wanting better gear and thinking that I couldn't possibly make decent art unless I had the better gear, I went "old school" and bought myself an FM2 on Ebay for $150. An FM2 is a (film) camera from the early 80's that has absolutely no automatic controls. Why'd I get it if I have over twenty times that much money invested in DSLR equipment?
Shooting with a camera that demands an awareness of it's settings, combined with the fact that I can't see the results right away, actually HELPS me take more thoughtful images, and makes for fewer technical & aesthetic mistakes.
It's not that I couldn't get the same results with a professional digital camera. It's just that very often, all the automatic controls and instant feedback can make a photographer careless, prematurely satisfied. OR it can make a photographer overly critical of their results. In fact, sometimes a digital camera can appear to give too much feedback, driving the photographer to take one picture over and over again just to get the white balance right, for example. Not only can this cause one to miss better photographic opporunities, more importantly it WILL detract from the enjoyment of the location...
For these reasons, I ultimately cannot attribute any good photos to a particular piece of equipment I own, nor any of the terrible photos to equipment I don't have.
However I CAN attribute the progression of my style and vision to the older-than-I FM2, to some extent, because it helps me to be more aware as a photographer.
Likewise to my DSLR: even though the majority of my images are made with a "decent" digital camera, I would not be so foolish as to say "I couldn't have possibly taken this-or-that picture with a different camera." I appreciate any DSLR just as much as I appreciate a fully manual camera. Digital allows you to experiment, try new things, and do it essentially for "free". Yes, you invest in the camera up front, but it doesn't cost anything to click that picture of star trails late at night, is what I mean. So get out there and try something new! Look at the images you made last week, and demand better of yourself this week... :-)
Thanks for reading, and happy shooting!
=Matt=
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