Reflecting on the "Four Stages of Photographer Evolution"

...in which I respond to a fellow Substack photographer's description of a prototypical photographer's journey, vis-à-vis their gear

I read a great article last week by Cedric at “I May Be Wrong” and wanted to use it as a jumping-off point to add my own commentary. I’m largely in agreement with his thesis and framing, even down to most of the details. His chronology absolutely describes my development as a photographer over the last 20+ years. I do have the occasional moment of departure from his assertions, though, so let’s get into it. I’ll quote from Cedric’s piece where appropriate and then add my two cents.

To begin, his thesis:

It seems that the majority of amateur photographers go through the same predictable journey that you can track through their gear. They begin their journey convinced that better gear will make them better photographers. Some end it knowing the opposite is true.

The last line is catchy, but I fear it’s a bit overstated – “the opposite” of the thought that better gear will make an amateur photographer better would be that better gear makes an amateur photographer worse, and I’m not sure I’d go that far. But let’s track though the four stages, as Cedric describes them:

Stage 1. Fresh-faced photographers start with whatever they can afford, which sometimes means second-hand gear that’s seen better decades, or the cheapest of the range.

This was absolutely my experience. My first two digital cameras were early compact point-and-shoot models – a Sony Cybershot and later a Fujifilm with a slightly higher megapixel count and optical zoom. My first DSLR kit was a Canon EOS Digital Rebel (probably the cheapest new model one could buy at the time) and two Sigma zoom lenses bought as a “starter” kit on eBay. I couldn’t afford anything better at the time, nor would I have known what to do with better stuff if I had it.

Stage 2. The tragedy is that most photographers are desperate to escape [Stage 1]. They spend hours scrolling through gear forums, convincing themselves that their limitations come from their equipment rather than their inexperience. They’re only partially right. Eventually, photographers scrape together enough money for their first “good” camera. Usually, it’s the most expensive thing they can justify buying. The bigger and more professional it looks, the better. … I remember the day I bought my first full-frame camera. It was the newly released 5D in 2007.

Check! I was on those forums, looking at images and reading other photographers’ experiences with different camera bodies and lenses. I upgraded from the amateur Digital Rebel to the prosumer 40D and some better EF-S lenses. Then, just like Cedric, I got a Canon 5D. I wasn’t able to get one when it came out (I think it was extremely expensive, probably more than double what the 40D cost), so I had to wait a couple years and get one second hand.

I felt like a proper photographer for the first time. The weight of it hanging around my neck was a badge of honour. This phase is about signalling as much as shooting. You want other photographers to know you’ve arrived. You want people to take you seriously. You want to belong to the club of people who own expensive things.

Because it was so long ago, it’s hard for me to remember just how much of the mythical lore surrounding full-frame sensors influenced my lust for the 5D. I’d love to think that I was above that sort of thing, but there’s no credible reason to think that I was – many of us did see the 5D as the aspirational (but mostly attainable, eventually) full-frame digital SLR. And I was elated when I finally got my hands on one. I also started pairing it with Canon L glass (a must for such a great camera sensor, surely!) and reveled in belonging to “the club of people who own expensive things.”

The irony is that this gear actually does improve your photographs, but not for the reasons you think. Better dynamic range and cleaner high ISO performance give you more technical flexibility. However, the real improvement comes from finally having equipment that doesn’t fight you at every turn.

I just want to mention one funny and contrarian quirk here about my move from the 40D to the 5D. (If you’re not familiar with Canon’s naming conventions and feel like 40 should be better than 5, they do it backwards: the cheapest models have 3 digits, the prosumer ones two, and the professional cameras just one.) Although the 5D had a much more capable sensor than the 40D, the latter was a much newer model and had some features that the 5D didn’t, most notably automatic sensor cleaning. The worst thing about the 5D (by a country mile) was that it was up to the user to keep the sensor free from dust, and, well, good luck. It was such a butt-pain that I can’t recommend picking up an original 5D to anyone – get the updated mark II version!

Stage 3. After a few years of lugging around professional equipment, photographers often pivot to vintage gear. Film cameras become particularly attractive.

Guilty! 😬 Medium format film cameras, no less! I had a few different Mamiya 645 models before I settled on the 645AF and a couple different lenses. I also had a Bronica RF645 rangefinder. I’ve now “downgraded” from 120mm to 35mm and have a Canon EOS 30V.

For some film photography suggests you understand the fundamentals. Vintage equipment implies you care more about craft than convenience. The photography community encourages this behaviour. Film photography is fetishised to an absurd degree. There’s an entire industry built around convincing photographers that digital is somehow inferior to analogue processes. It’s mostly nonsense, but compelling nonsense.

Generally defensible, in my experience. When I got into film I was already quite a mature digital photographer, so my reasons were much more my own than the result of external influences. Still, I am also the sort of person who loves a mechanical watch and has a record player, so I appear to be very susceptible to this compelling nonsense.

Stage 4. The final stage is when photographers stop caring about gear entirely. They realise that the best camera is the one you have with you, and the lightest camera is the one you’re most likely to carry. This realisation usually comes after years of missed shots because your camera was too heavy to bring along, or too conspicuous to use discreetly.

I can sign off on most of this. I certainly have not stopped caring about gear entirely, but I have doubtless slowed my pace of replacing or upgrading it compared to ten or fifteen years ago. I could write a thousand words agreeing with Cedric on the lightest camera being the one I’m most likely to carry: I’m the guy who sold all of his full-frame Canon gear over ten years ago to shoot with the comparatively dwarfish micro four-thirds system. I had the experience of having an amazing but expensive and heavy camera that I took to fewer and fewer places, and that eventually became too obvious an absurdity to ignore. Nor have I budged an iota on this conviction – I look at the size and weight of some of Canon’s new RF zooms and wonder who in the hell is lugging those bastards around. (And paying those prices!)

At this stage, The equipment becomes invisible. You stop thinking about aperture rings and focus peaking and start thinking about light and composition and timing. This is when you actually become a photographer rather than someone who owns cameras.

I do look for equipment that can become invisible – gear that does what I need it to do so that I can concentrate on the business of getting the compositions I want in the light that I need. But again, Cedric goes for the provocative soundbite when he invokes “actually becom[ing] a photographer”. I don’t think it’s possible (or useful to try) to tease out the necessary and sufficient conditions of photographer-hood. Yet I think I know what he means – it’s a meaningful distinction despite resisting definition.

It can take a very long time to reach this final stage. … Camera manufacturers release new models every year, each promising revolutionary improvements. Photography forums are filled with pixel-peeping comparisons and upgrade discussions. YouTube channels generate millions of views reviewing equipment that’s functionally identical to last year’s models. … The dirty secret is that cameras stopped getting meaningfully better 10 years ago. A ten-year-old camera can produce images that are indistinguishable from the latest models in most real-world situations (I defy you to find meaningful differences between a photo taken with a 15 year old 6D and one taken with a R6). The improvements are incremental and largely irrelevant to the actual practice of photography.

Ok, I think I have the most to quibble with in this section, but I’ll start off by reinforcing what is probably the most important point Cedric makes in his post, which is that a “ten-year-old camera can produce images that are indistinguishable from the latest models in most real-word situations.” I will happily stand next to him and shout this in the town square. In fact I’ll even go a step further and say that there’s little meaningful difference in quality among the major manufacturers. Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, OM System, hell, throw Pentax in there – they’re all producing amazing overengineered equipment. Everyone’s lenses are tack-sharp, even those from third party manufacturers like Sigma and Tamron. Just pick one and go with it – it really doesn’t matter!

However, this does not mean that, on the whole, cameras “stopped getting meaningfully better 10 years ago” in my experience. This could be true in the full-frame market; I’ve never owned any full-frame mirrorless gear, so I can’t scrutinize Cedric’s assertion in that domain. In the micro four-thirds arena, camera bodies now include a whole heap of new features, most of which I would not voluntarily live without. Just off the top of my head: computational photography modes (hand-held high resolution, live neutral density filters, live composite), improved AF modes (automatic eye-focusing, starry sky autofocus, AI subject detection and tracking), stacked CMOS sensors, 4K cinematic video, pro capture burst mode… these are all things that I find extremely useful and that meaningfully expand the types of photos I can take with just a camera and lens. I would not settle for a 10-year-old micro four-thirds camera body; in fact I wouldn’t even work with more recent models that lack some of the aforementioned features. Perhaps this is micro four-thirds specific, but there’s still plenty of meaningful innovation in this format.

But there is of course a case for the necessity of going through these stages: what you learn at each stage is a prerequisite of successfully moving on to the next. If you don’t go through the gear buying stage, no matter how many times other people tell you buying stuff is pointless, you won’t believe it. You need to discover it for yourself.

Sad but true. Most people can’t be told not to do something they’ve already convinced themselves that they need to do, least of all a photographer with severe GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome – this is a real term that we use! 😅) I once tried to talk a very close friend out of buying an expensive Sony alpha camera and lens combo as his first “real” photo gear. He bought it anyway, and he’s only used it a handful of times in half a decade. Too heavy, valuable, and complicated to use most of the time, it was a giant waste of money, just as I told him it’d be. And yet! As Cedric says, some things we just need to discover for ourselves.

Make sure to give Cedric a follow if you enjoyed reading this, and I’ll see you all next week for another model writeup and photo post.