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An all too familiar photographic journey

 

Letter to George

Dear Mr. Johnston,

Thank you for your response attempting to assist me in my Nikon purchase. However, I find your recommendation preposterous and extremely strange coming from a so-called expert. First of all, the D700 at $2,450 is far beyond my budget, which I told you is $400, and way too much overkill for a photographer just setting out, and your suggestion that I purchase 35mm ƒ/2 and 85mm ƒ/1.8 lenses is strange. Those lenses don’t even zoom? All of my friends use zoom lenses and that is all my local store carries. I am somewhat mystified by your note.

Sincerely,
George

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Dear George,

Yes, you are absolutely right, and I apologize. Like many aficionados I am excessively affected by my own preferences and habits, and it leads me to give buying advice that is indeed idiosyncratic. The suggestion that you jump in from the get-go with an investment of $3,195 is indeed preposterous (good word).

I would like to make amends by suggesting an objectively more characteristic 25-step course of action for you. My experience in this field has demonstrated many times that this sequence is broadly very typical, and I think you will find that these new recommendations far more objectively trace the course of most serious photographers’ investments in their gear.

I apologize again—in what follows, I have used some current model names and numbers as representative of product types, even though what I’m describing is usually a 3–5 year process and actual model numbers and prices will naturally change over than interval.

And I say the process as outlined contains 25 steps; but you might well find there will be more.

Step 1. Purchase a “digicam” or digital point-and-shoot, chiefly because that’s what most human beings do first when it occurs to them that they want a camera. This will be preceded by approximately four months of troublesome and increasingly frustrating product research and shopping, during which time you will be learning how to shop but not how photograph. Also during that time, you will be limited to taking pictures with your iPhone. It gradually dawns on you that no one can give you perfectly satisfactory advice about buying a point-and-shoot, for the simple reason that there are roughly 13,796 of them on the market (note: estimate only) with dozens dropping off the cliff into discontinuation and dozens more being introduced all the time, making the search for “the best one” a shifting target even if you could tell them apart. Eventually, lose patience and buy what the local local store counterman recommends, even though in the backmost reaches of your almost-subconscious you suspect that his high level of confidence might be motivated by the fact that he gets a spiff for selling that model because it has a higher profit margin than most of the others, and his boss is pushing him to push it. With tax, it only comes in $30 over your absolute top budget number of $400. Belatedly, you will remember to check B&H Photo, which will be selling the same model, only with an extra card, for $236.

Step 2. Be perfectly happy with your new purchase…for about 2 1/2 months. After that, slowly discover its infuriating shutter lag, the alarming slowness of its lens at full telephoto, its wretched high-ISO performance, and its general frailty and operational quirkiness. Nevertheless, use said digicam for another 1.8 years as you doggedly and determinedly “get your money’s worth out of it,” even though you pretty much hate it the whole time. Still, it’s always with you, you do a lot of snapping, photography’s fun.

Step 3. After the digicam fails utterly on an expensive vacation—just when you most needed it to work—buy a Canon G10 premium fixed-lens camera. ($420.)

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