Xjyuk

Don't know if this is already a known thing/wiki/previously asked here, but basically:

How important is a good camera for actually making strides in photography/doing well? I've done some photography now as an amateur and even have an Instagram which is both like a portfolio and a public display of my means. I do wonder though: Am I really limited by using a low-quality camera much?

It's often said that a good photographer supposedly, "Can make any photo good with any camera."

Is this a truth, or are we really limited by the means of our cameras in taking pro-quality photos or good photography in general? I can't imagine some cheap smartphone camera having anywhere near the same means as a multi-hundred or multi-thousand dollar camera with excellent lens, MPs, and etc.

I mean, if cameras didn't matter, every great photographer would use just any camera and there'd be no market for dedicated cameras, correct? I'm inclined to think that cameras themselves can make a big difference aside from one's photography skills and knowledge in general, given these variations.

The general idea of photography may rest with the fact that a good photographer can make even a poor camera work its best -- but can one really expect to get serious if they're limited to just a, say, cheap smartphone camera as a means of advancing in photography and creating stunning photos?

Or is it simply a fact that like a good photographer can make a poor camera work its best, a poor photographer could also use an extremely good camera to make their inexperience a little hidden? Both these things are necessary, but to what extent I don't know, i.e., camera itself vs. skills overall.

As with many things, the end quality depends on the weakest link. Because most cameras are quite good, even cheap ones (even from mobile phones), the weakest link is mostly the person behind the camera.

When learning some theory and practice, photographers can work around some pitfalls of cameras, but also knowing the shortcomings of a camera. When that knowledge is gained, than it is time to step up.

I have seen photographers making beautiful pictures with a phone, and I have seen people making crappy pictures with some high end consumer camera.

So if you ask specifically about important, you can take the following items into account:

• If you want to print the picture in a large format, you need more pixels, thus more quality.


• If you are satisfied with the pictures you make, you do not need a new camera.


• If you enjoy your hobby more occasionally buying something new, than maybe the quality of the camera is not important, but to make your hobby nicer (so it's important to enjoy your hobby more).


• If you are a professional, than it depends on the context you need the camera for (e.g. what working conditions, high ISO needs, shutter speeds for lenses, video quality, sensor size to print large pictures etc). But if you are a pro, you probably (hopefully) know when the quality of a camera is the bottleneck.

A "Good quality camera" is Very important to good quality photography, however the real question you are looking for is something like "what aspects make for good quality in a camera for a given subject matter?"

Cameras are tools, and you use a tool suited to the task at hand.

A small tack hammer is not much use in driving railroad spikes or breaking up concrete, but a sledge hammer isn't much use for setting finish tacks on a couch. And neither does you much good if you want to put a screw in something...

Choosing a camera often comes down to picking aspects or technologies that will help you achieve your goals. 'Better' [newer/more expensive cameras] are better able to push the extremes of photography. Having sensors and auto focus systems that work in lower and lower levels of light for example.

However, if you're working in excellent light and under very controlled conditions, then the latest and greatest professional camera from the big names isn't really going to produce a noticeably better 8x10 print in the end than an average 10 year old consumer camera.

So what makes some cameras 'better'?

• Better controls: One of the biggest things to look for when looking for a 'better' camera is one that is easier to point where you want with the settings you need, and have focus on where it is important. Cameras with rear dials so you can control both shutter and aperture without a toggle button, or ones with more focus points may be important considerations if you find those lacking in your current system.




• Lenses and options: Cameras are light capturing tools, but the lens that gathers the light is often more important than the capture tool itself.




• Sensors: A very important point, but what is 'good' may not actually be as easy to see as marketing departments pretend. For the majority of photography, anything above 10megapixels are just a bonus. Noise levels and sensor sizes tend to be far more important than pushing the pixel count higher and higher. [Film is also still a very viable option. Especially as you get to the larger sizes. You can buy a lot of film for the price of a medium format digital...]

The TL-DR of it is that a quality camera is one that lets you capture what you need. Whether that is the latest professional digital camera or an old fixed focus box camera and a roll of film is up to the photographer.

Focus on where you find your equipment is 'failing you', and address those shortcomings. Avoid the trap of thinking 'a more expensive camera will be better'.

Think about it like automobiles. A racing car or a semi-trailer truck would be awful to use on a grocery shopping trip no matter how 'pro' those automobiles are. But, someone who is in the business of moving goods across the country isn't going to pick the racing car or the family car either.

Most of the professional photographers I've met or read about their processes used cameras that reflected what kind of work they were doing. Someone shooting sports for a living needs to have a camera that can mount big fast telephotos, and that camera needs to be rugged and focus and fire quickly. Someone doing very high end architectural photography might use a technical view camera and not care about how quickly he focuses or any kind of frames per second. A landscape photographer might really need a 40+ MP camera.

Those tools are all expected of them to stay competitive in the market, because their pixels are being compared to other people's pixels. There is sort of a technical arms race going over time - once in some fields you needed a medium format film camera to be taken seriously, but not anymore.

But if you are just shooting for friends/family/yourself, you don't need a camera that's too heavy or too cumbersome to use.

As for me, personally, I had the good fortune to have been able to use some nice photography equipment - as well as some equipment that a lot of professionals would laugh at. And you know, I've shot a lot of very boring but technically good shots with the nice equipment - and some interesting and important to me pictures with the junky equipment.

After all, what is good photography - something that is pixel-perfect technically good (which is 100% actually important to some people), or is it just an image you want to see more than once (which is 100% actually not necessary to some people)?

Great answers here but i will add my two cents.

Not as important has the person using the camera.

"Good Photographer" Change the word "good" to Knowledgeable.

A Knowledgeable Photographer can not only

make even a poor camera work its best

but will know how light behaves, and how cameras need to be used to capture the light. ( and that sensors are different then film )

Knowledge that the camera sees ( records ) light differently then human eye/brain.

Len's, sensor, meter, shutter, microchip, and the programing of the software of a camera are important factors, but the photographers brain is the most important factor. IMO.

I will let others speak to the differences of cameras and gear.

A 'good' camera is much harder to use than a phone.

The trade-off between being able to snap precisely what you want rather than what the phone will give you is that to get precisely what you want you have to know precisely how to get it.

A good photographer can always get the best out of a phone, because they already know what it will do to their shot. Their framing & composition skills will not be lessened by the phones all-automatic limitations. The downside is they will have a fixed lens, so they have to 'zoom with their feet' ie walk nearer or further to compose the shot.

There will be some shots they already know cannot be done properly on a phone, so they won't even try. Close-up portraits, for instance, on single lens phones... avoid - unless you like that big nose, little ears look.

Technically, tiny lenses on tiny sensors can never have the same absolute quality as a large lens on a large sensor, but if the picture is only ever going to be seen on a phone or small laptop, no-one will ever notice.

If you need an advertising billboard, or large print, then the phone will soon show up its failings.