gdanmitchell
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 p.5 #11 · Debating switching from Sony to Canon | |
melcat wrote:
I know you've had a lot of contact with musicians, so you must have heard this standard piece of advice: "Choose the instrument you love, that is right for you." Often, this is not even the most expensive instrument under consideration. It's especially important for string instruments like violins and guitars. At the other end of the scale, pianists have less choice, but this can be a reason for someone to choose some other instrument to learn. The right instrument has a feeling of "oneness", and this includes the sound, the feel of it and the appearance. This is a constant among muscians, across different cultures and for centuries.
I don't see why cameras should be different, except that, historically, the cameras on offer have usually failed spectacularly by these criteria. At the very least, a new expensive camera in 2021 should not actively distract and annoy the photographer when they are trying to create photographs.
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The response to this is complex, and it is, indeed, something I've thought about a lot. Let me give it a try.
First, most musical instruments — at least the best ones — are not the product of the same sort of industrial processes that create photographic equipment. Consequently, there can be more real differences among them.
I was a trombone player, playing professionally, at one point. I recall an event where a group of us were meeting to play trombone ensemble music, and we — while keeping our own mouthpieces — simply passed each of our instruments to the right around the circle and all played everyone of them. They were different — one might have a smoother slide, another a more responsive high range, etc.
But... that's not what we're talking about here. There aren't really subtle and meaningful differences between one person's R5 and another person's R5.
Back then the "best" instruments came from the King and the Conn companies. (That has since changed.) You were either a Conn trombonist or a King trombonist. (Sound familiar?) But, guess what? No one could tell which one you used by the sound of your instrument. And, perhaps more important, some folks (this should sound familiar, too) believed that K was best while others were equally adamant that C was better. And (more familiar territory!) every so often someone would make a big deal of switching from K to C or from C to K. Often, though not quite always, such players were the type who were always looking for the magic nostrum that would bring some immediate and significant change to their playing. (These folks also had cases for of mouthpieces, paid good money to get custom lead pipes, and all the rest.)
I'm married to a professional musician who plays a woodwind instrument in symphony and opera orchestras. Among players of her instrument there is a long tradition of intense (some might say borderline pathological) attention to small differences among instruments and materials related to those instruments. She believed in that stuff for years. Then, a decade or two ago, she adopted a new point of view: That is is better and more productive to learn to play well on equipment that does not meet some imaginary and unobtainable level of mythological perfection. This was a tremendous relief to her and defocusing from the obsession with mechanical perfection her playing and musicianship grew.
I've often wondered about the number of photographers who have some background in music. Most that I know of were involved in music as instrumental performers — not too may singers and not too many composers. (Though the latter was the focus of my academic training.) What, I wondered, could explain this? One thought crossed my mind: that the appeal of the interaction between the artist and a mechanical instrument might be one connection between instrumentalists and photographers.
I can tell you that there is at least as much obsession about the "instrument" in music as in photography. Much of it is a distraction and unwarranted. Part of the difficulty is that _some_ attention to this is critically important. You do need to pay attention to your instrument (photographic or musical) and master its operation and one goal is to make the operation of thing so transparent and intuitive that you stop thinking about it and instead thing of what you are trying to create, whether that is imagery or sound.
In an endeavor where the instrument is such an important tool, there seems to be a risk that this real relationship can become fetishized and given almost fantastical importance.
I can also report with some authority that there are those in both professions worlds who look at this fetishizing and roll their eyes...
Dan
Pardon the length of this unedited stream-of-consciousness post. And, as always, YMMV.
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To a different poster who wrote soothing about the "fun of shooting:" — that concept often confuses me. Honestly, serious photography isn't generally "fun" in the same what that, say, skiing or vacationing or going out to dinner is. The process of making photographs is actually work. It IS a good and rewarding kind of work, but it is also difficult and sometimes frustrating. Operating cameras isn't, at least for me, particularly "fun."
However, creating successful photographic images is gratifying. It is the "seeing" part of photography that I find engaging. I guess that here I part company with some folks.
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