All I Want For Christmas

Every year around Christmas I'll get an e mail or two asking, "I'd like to buy someone a camera as a present. What kind should I get?"

Well here's a few things I'd suggest you consider. First what kind of photography will the photographer be involved with? Most people will be taking pictures of their families. For the most part these photographs will be taken outside during a family event or inside the house. The person taking the photos will be much like my wife, "I don't want to have to learn photography just to take a picture." For something like this a Nikon Coolpix or Kodak Easyshare is fine. I gave both my young daughters Coolpix cameras and they have a lot of fun with them.

For my wife I replaced her Nikon N65 with a D50. She likes to photograph butterflies and caterpillars so having a camera with exchangeable lenses was important for her. And despite all my efforts to "help" her she still shoots entirely in a total Program mode. Since most of her images are created in "open shade" situations that works well for her. Average light, average photographs. For someone like this Nikon's D40 or Canon's Rebel series would work well.

For the person who wants to go "professional" I would really advise them to get an entry level camera from Nikon or Canon and learn how to use that in manual mode. Learn how cameras work, learn the craft and art first and then look for what kind of tool you want to invest in.

You see I'm not impressed by expensive cameras. Back when I had a 2500 square foot studio and we were shooting film I'd have "wannabe" photographers come in with Hasselblad cameras and photographs that were so poorly composed, exposed and printed that I felt embarrassed for them. What's a Hasselblad? That's the camera that the astronauts took to the moon. The body alone ran 2-3 thousand dollars; a complete rig probably about $4000 with a single lens.

What you must realize is that ultimately it isn't the camera that takes the photograph. It's the photographer. A camera, a lens, a light meter, flash...these are just tools. Let me give you two examples to consider.

When I was teaching photography classes at my studio students would come in and see the sets, backdrops, lighting gear and the RB67 and 4x5 cameras and say,"Man, if only I had a camera like THAT I could take great pictures!" So one summer to show them how wrong that was I took out a ten dollar plastic Holga camera (like the one at the top of the article) that had the back held together with electrical tape. I would use my radio triggers to run my lights and at the end of a session with the RB67 switch over to the Holga and shoot. The images were gorgeous, in fact I was selling 16x20 prints from what I was shooting with that camera. It wasn't the camera that made those images sell. It was my talent.

Second example. We were covering a wedding two years ago and Melissa was assisting me. She was a struggling college student and she had a Canon digital Rebel. One of the guests made a comment to her about what a cheap camera it was and that she shot with a "professional" camera that was much more expensive. It was all Melissa could do to restrain me from walking up to that woman and saying, "See that very talented girl with the cheap camera? Photographs she shot in Pakistan a few years ago are being exhibited in a prestigious gallery in London this fall. Where, may I ask, are your images being exhibited?"

I cannot emphasize this enough. Cameras don't create images. Photographers do. So choose a camera that is compatible with the experience, goals and desire to learn of the photographer. Not everyone wants to be a professional photographer but everyone likes to "take pictures" and have fun.

Merry Christmas!