I just read Kirk Tuck's (Visual Science Lab) August 7 blog where he's
discussing buying/selling/renting gear to accommodate the "incessant
change".
I believe it's a good take on the industry from the perspective of the
professional photographer. Kirk has been altering his own mindset over
the years from "Professional Photographer" to "Service Provider". As
such, he's a little more willing to follow and/or chase the trends in
business. He's constantly reinventing himself to stay "current".
But at a cost.
What he is slowly coming to terms with is the need/benefit to renting
over owning. A small, concise and practical kit for the majority of
the work, and then rent everything else. This does harken back to the
olden days where if you had to rent something, say, 10 times in a
year, you were better off owning it, but that's when equipment didn't
evolve so quickly. I was able to shoot weddings with a 20+ year old
second-hand Mamiya 645. You can't get away with that any more unless
your gig is shooting weddings with 40+ year old film cameras.
One thing that I keyed in on is his adapting WiFi. I can tell that
this is new territory for him, and one that I went through myself.
Granted, I did it with a $40 Eye-Fi card, but most of the new breed of
cameras have WiFi built in. For me, it has been a game changer--to the
point where I actually sold the E-1 because of it. My workflow has
WiFi as a part of it for event photography. I'm shooting and
distributing the images to the client DURING the shoot, entirely
wirelessly.
As I continue to gaze at my naval thinking about a new camera, I ask
myself what it is that I REALLY want. My long tenure with the A1, E-1
and L1 has taught me one thing: The "1" of a particular line is the
"game changer" that is all about taking chances. The followup models
quickly homogenize to the industry norm. It has also taught me that I
can either buy a different camera every year or I can long-term it. I
do like the idea of having a "new shiny" every year, but in doing so,
I'm pretty sure to get a dog every once in a while (like Moose did
with the 50D) because the game-changers don't happen every year. I'm
not necessarily into evolutionary, but I do like revolutionary.
However, unlike Kirk, I am not trying to please the customer of the
day. The most important client I have to please is myself. As it
pertains to camera gear, I ask myself if ANY of the cameras on the
market please ME. I can rent/borrow/5finger anything I need if a
paying client asks for it and is willing to pay for it. If they aren't
willing to pay for it, then they either accept what I have or hire
somebody else. This year will be interesting as we are right at the
threshold of a new generation of cameras (FF mirrorless) that will
likely please me AND please my customers for a while.
Now, if I can only convince more of them to have the jobs shot on film.
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
--
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