Oh! You Have a Better Camera!

The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.
Ansel Adams

When people see my pictures, they appreciate my photography. But the appreciation is often followed by a question – which camera do you use? “Oh, you are using this high-end camera. That is why”. Almost all the photographers, I am sure, will vouch for my experience. I wish to take up this question head-on.

In my view, the camera or for that matter gear, matters a lot and I mean a lot. But the question when asked after seeing and appreciating your work is analogous to asking the kind and make of brushes and colors a painter has used for making her/his masterpiece. That is, frankly, amusing to me. If that is so, then let us make it an even field. These tools of the trade should take all the credit, be it brushes or colors of painters or the gear of photographers. But, on the contrary and in reality, camera and other gear matters a lot while brushes and colors are seldom broached by the audience. A bad painting is often attributed to person’s limitations while a bad photograph is often attributed to the camera. You will often hear, “I clicked many pictures, but you know, my camera is not good”. While the person saying that may be right, it does not mean that bad pictures are essentially due to the limitation of the camera. It may actually mean s/he doesn’t know which brush to use for what kind of stroke or how to use it adeptly in the first place. Be it brushes/colors or camera/gear, they are just tools of the trade. We are their users. Unless we know how to choose and use our tools, how can we expect the desired results.

To support my theory, I have picked some of the iconic pictures of world-renowned Magnum photographer, Mr. Raghu Rai. Please see them and judge yourself if you need a high-end camera to get them.

Each picture I have included above from the collection of Mr. Raghu Rai can be taken by a regular point and shoot (P & S) camera. In this age of digital revolution, even P & S cameras have become very sophisticated. But people don’t care to understand the functionality of their tool of choice. They wish to get the desired results by just pointing and shooting. Sometimes it works and at other times, especially with challenging lighting (problem with exposure) or difficulty in deciding/getting vantage points (problem with framing), it doesn't. That brings us to a vital point in the whole debate – Framing. Interestingly, apart from the tools of the trade, most of the people don’t appreciate enough the importance of framing. In my opinion, in photography, half is framing and the other half is exposure. If you get one of them wrong, the result is often disappointing. If you are slightly initiated in photography, you must have heard masters of the trade mentioning about ‘crops’. Even if you don’t know, the concept is very easy to understand. ‘Crop’ is nothing but the same photograph albeit with some portion excluded. Cropping is often practiced to remove the framing errors or simply to stress/highlight the subject/theme of the photograph. With practice and more experience, photographers learn to frame it right while shooting to reduce the need of cropping their pictures to bring out the desired effect/result. Please note that I used the word ‘reduce’, because I have seen highly published photographers using crops for better results. But what if the frame demanded more of the scene than you have captured? Well, in that case, you have missed the bus. Better next time.

Your need for a high-end camera and gear depends on your desired level of control over framing and exposure. For sports photography, speed of the camera is critical. Fashion, wedding, food, advertising and other commercial types of photography certainly demand better tools of the trade and training.