gdanmitchell
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bobby350z wrote:
...you only live once so shoot with the best if you can afford it.
In general, I agree with that sentiment — getting a better thing if you can afford it has potential advantages to consider.
It sounds like for you this particular kind of camera and particular format fills that need in many ways, and that's fine and appropriate, too.
However, there are additional issues worth exploring, even among people who share this point of view — in fact, especially. among such people, as they are counting on the extra expense producing that added value that the "best" promises.
The main question is about what "best" means, and then aligning the notion of "best" with the things that produce that result for the photographer. Let's say that for you the best is defined by having a very high system resolution in a system that is very good for a certain kind of portrait photography. There's a good argument that something like a GFX 100s could be "the best" for that sort of photography. We could perhaps agree that a small group of lenses might be the "best" for this kind of work. (There are counter-arguments, too, but I'll just accept this idea for the purpose of my point.)
The issue is that "best" is not a simple, one-dimensional thing here. It is impossible to identify one camera or camera system as being "the best" in a more universal way. (Let me apologize here to those who see how obvious this is. I'm writing this for folks who maybe don't yet see that. If the point I'm making is obvious... there's no reason to keep reading this.)
Let's say that the person's big interest isn't the kind of portrait photography that I mentioned, but lies elsewhere — how about wildlife photography. It is quite likely (and it really should be obvious) that a GFX 100s is not the "best" system any more. (This is not to say that some fine, outlier photographer couldn't make it work...) The odds are pretty good that the best system now will be something like a high-end DSLR or mirrorless system with very fast AF, a deep and fast burst mode buffer, and so forth... equipped with some rather long lenses.
Or imagine someone doing what we might very loosely call old-school, classic street photography. Here the "best" system is neither of the above, but might more likely be a small and light system equipped with small and light lenses.
And so on...
So the argument for "getting the best," which is a useful, defensible idea, is not an argument for any single, particular system. Getting the "best" first requires the photographer to identify what it is that he/she is actually trying to accomplish and to then ask and answer some real-world questions about the effects of gear choices on those goals.
This loops back to the original post in this thread.
gabe212 wrote:
Hey I am thinking about selling off my xt4 and lenses to get the gfx50sii and the 80mm. I mainly do portraits. Single, couples, families, pets, kids. Do you think ill notice a big improvements? I downloaded a couple sample raws from the internet and I had a blast editing them.I know the focus will be a lot slower but I used to shoot with a canon 6d and 85mm 1.2. That thing was pretty slow but I still loved it. Is it worth it?!
There's never going to be agreement among this crowd about the answer to this question. For ne thing, we don't have all the facts. (How large does this person print? How will the objectively measurable differences between the two systems affect clients' perceptions of the work? etc...) In addition, there are highly subjective imponderables here: "Is it worth it?" Who knows?
Honestly, I think that the best thing for our OP to do is to rent/borrow a 50MP Fujifilm GFX system and make some photographs of the sort he would use it for, print them up (if that's the output format he usually provides to his portrait clients) and ponder. And then, assuming that this is a portrait business, ask whether the visible differences, if any, do or do not justify the costs of replacing his current system.
Again, while each of us can come to some conclusions about what is best for us, what is best for someone else is not necessarily going to be the same thing.
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