Good morning!
Welcome to the Morning Comment—the replacement for the Morning Coffee. Every morning I'll talk about a reader comment from the last day or three. My responses are just my opinion. Even if I argue, I'm not necessarily claiming that I'm right and the commenter is wrong.
This morning's comment, from David Zivic: "I've heard it several times and I think right here in TOP. 'The best camera is the one you have with you.'"
This is an Internet truism, and I wouldn't bet the house that I've never repeated it. David's probably right—I probably have.
But I'm really not sure I buy it. Instead, I think I'd say something like "It's best to have with you whatever camera you need to get the shot you want." Of course that doesn't roll off the tongue.
But really, far more often in the history of photography, great photographers went to great trouble and toil to have the right cameras with them for the work they envisioned in their mind's eye. For some, this might indeed have been any camera at all; but for many, having the right camera was integral to the way they saw and to the results they got. Even photographers who did great work with toy cameras wouldn't have been well served if they'd had a 35mm SLR with them. Many of the great view camera photographers, at the very least, could not have done the work they did without the cameras they toiled to carry. No professional would ever say, "Well, it was the wrong camera for the job, but it was the one I happened to have with me." No bird photographer would not have a long lens because it was too difficult to carry.
Granted, one thing the truism emphasizes is that it doesn't matter how nice a camera you have if you leave it at home all the time, and that's true enough. But maybe that just means you're too lazy to schlepp what you really ought to be schlepping. Better to suck it up and lug along what you need than excuse yourself with some weak-coffee cliché. (I could be talking to myself here.)
We have to be prepared for what we want to do. That's just part of the game we play. It has always been so. The Internet truism seems to implicitly encourage people to be satisfied with any camera that happens to be undemandingly portable. That's really the wrong encouragement, I'd say. Better to carry the camera you need, whatever it happens to be. People will only judge the result. Nobody cares if your camera fit in your pocket or not.
Mike
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