Expensive Cameras Are Bad For Photos

In this blog I will explain why I think expensive cameras can be bad for your photography. Let me first address the elephant in the room. Expensive is relative. A £1000 camera to one person is eye watering, while an £8000 setup for someone else won’t even make their bank balance look different. My definition of expensive is simple. If you triple the price, does that figure make you uncomfortable? If so, then it’s expensive. If not, then it’s affordable for you. I’ve sprinkled in some photos from the current Istanbul trip in here too.

Opportunity Cost

The most immediate impact on your photography will come in the form of opportunity cost. Let’s say you really want a Leica. You spend a year saving for one, and finally you drop all your savings on a brand new M11. The issue is that you now have no money left for photography. So if you get a once in a lifetime opportunity to go and photograph Hokkaido in the winter, you can’t, because you’ve lost that opportunity.

Photography is more than owning a camera, and by overspending on gear, you pay for it by not being able to go to interesting places. If you want to get good photos, you need to put yourself in good places. If you want to have cool stories, you need to do cool shit. If all your money is tied up in a camera, you can do neither of those things.

It’s not just the camera

Just like with cars, the expense doesn’t end with the camera. On average, the more expensive the camera, the more expensive everything around it becomes. Let’s use my Hasselblad for example. The camera itself is around £6000, however if you want a lens, you can add another £4000. While it has a built in SSD, if you want a backup of your photos, you’d need a CFexpress card. The photos are 200MB each, thus requiring a large card, which can cost £500. An expensive lens needs a high quality UV filter for protection, that’s another £100.

All those megapixels need a lot of storage and processing power, so you need to make sure you have plenty of hard drive space and a modern laptop to deal with the files. Of course you need to transfer the files, so it’s either an expensive card reader or a Thunderbolt cable. This is an extreme example, however I am using it to illustrate that it’s never just the camera. If you buy a supercar, you can expect to pay a lot more for maintenance, insurance, tax, and so on. The same applies, to a degree, with cameras.

Attention

I’m lucky to own a Leica Q3 43, a brand that is universally regarded as luxury. That red dot is known worldwide even outside of photography circles, thus it’s an attention magnet. I’ve lost count of how many times someone stopped me and said “I love your Leica” or “cool camera man”. Of course everyone appreciates compliments, however with good attention also comes the bad.

Having expensive cameras attracts attention, and in some scenarios this isn’t a good thing. There are certain parts of the world, or even certain areas of London, where I wouldn’t take the Leica. Luckily I have a small Ricoh that flies under the radar and is perfect for such scenarios, but what if a Leica is your only camera? Would you risk it, or not shoot?

Fear of damage / loss

This is arguably the main reason I think expensive cameras are bad for photos. When you are more worried about your camera than your newborn, your photography will take a nosedive. Cameras are tools that allow you to capture your vision. The moment a camera stops being a tool and becomes an investment, that’s when you have a problem. When you’re looking at your camera and in the back of your mind you see 12 months of savings, you will use it very differently.

Earlier this year I was in Menorca catching up with my good mate Jorge, who personally knows and has shot with Steve McCurry. While discussing how Steve managed to get such incredible photos, one topic that constantly resurfaced was his level of fearlessness when putting himself and his gear in harm’s way to get the shot. Whenever I meet successful photographers, their cameras look like they’ve been through hell and back. I’m talking about Leicas with half the paint missing, Sony A7RVs that look like they were run over by a truck. One of my mates, Jord, can’t even use his hot shoe because it’s one big cluster of rust. Yet he has some insane shots from the most unique parts of the world.

What I’m trying to say is that if you baby your camera and you’re scared to use it, you can wave goodbye to your best photos. I’m not suggesting you should be careless or reckless, but sometimes you need to risk your gear, and yourself, for the shot. Quite often the best photos are 20% skill and 80% a risk that paid off.

Hampered progress

Everything I discussed so far leads to the same outcome, hampered progress. If you need to shell out £4000 on a lens, chances are you might only buy one and that’s it. This means you don’t get to experiment with all the different lenses and focal lengths out there. Part of the fun when you’re starting out is experimentation, and when this crucial stage is hampered by cost, then you pay a price bigger than just money.

If you can’t travel, even locally, and shoot because you’re in debt due to an expensive camera, your progress will be hampered. If you’re scared to use your camera due to various risks, your progress will be hampered.

If the goal is to own nice cameras and use them recreationally, then this blog might not resonate that much. If the goal is to progress as a photographer and get the best images possible, then there might be some food for thought.

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