gdanmitchell
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 p.1 #3 · Brand Hopping: Is it really that weird to be camera promiscuous? | |
christopher_icu wrote:
Is sticking with one brand for life a rule I wasn't told about?
At any given time, my camera kit includes a high-resolution workhorse body, a secondary body with medium resolution, an ASP-C, and an ultra-compact. I try to keep this kit within the same brand line.
In the past two years that has been Sony primarily, with a second kit in Nikon and Canon.
I also keep a camera solely for art work, which has been Leica Q or SL series, or in the past year a Fuji X-T5, X-T50, and X100v and vi.
I've never gone deep on Lumix due to low resolution, but loved my LX100, wanted an S9 for the longest time, and now I'm lusting after the L10.
This is just the way my business works and my art.
But, in my camera meet-ups and even in buying/selling/trades, there's a little bit of judgement about my lack of brand monogamy.
Is it really that big of a deal?...Show more →
I think of "brand hopping" as moving frequently from one camera and brand to another, often making a switch not terribly long after buying into a brand with the belief that it was "the answer" and would resolve all sort of concerns, including creative frustration. It is similar to the desire some have to buy every now model of camera, often at the high end, or to jump on each new bandwagon.
Not all examples of brand-switching qualify. Some photographers may own more than one brand for different purposes. (I use one for street/travel and another for landscapes, for example.) And making a brand change over the very long term can make sense. (Over my photographic life I've gone from Minolta (film) to Pentax (film) and Canon (digital), which I augmented with Fujifilm. But that's over decades, not months or years.)
I think that there are several reasons people do the brand-hopping dance:
- The thrill of acquiring new stuff. There is, naturally, excitement when we buy a new thing. It wears off. If that excitement was a big part of the reason for the purchase, the buyer may well be just looking for another fix.
- FOMO. When another company comes out with a new thing (bigger sensor, mirrorless design, etc.) we are primed, in this tech-driven world, to feel like we want to be part of the new thing.
- Frustration with photography as photography. I often hear people who pair "I'm feeling creatively blocked and frustrated" with "I'll buy a new thing to make me more creative." It isn't totally impossible that getting a new thing might persuade you to go out and use it more, but that should be a hint: it isn't the thing itself, it was the getting out and using it more that made the difference.
- Because they can. Some folks with a big bank account don't think twice about spending big five-figure amounts just, well, because they can.
So, bottom line, in most case the thing we call brand-hopping is not a sign of seriousness about photography. (That's not to say that some serious, talented photographers don't get caught up in it.)
There is a lot to be said for using gear long and intensely enough to "bond" with it, to learn its ins and outs, to the point that its operation becomes intuitive and natural.
New stuff is fine. Heck, I'm going to get a bunch of it in then next few months. But constant jumping from brand to brand rarely makes sense and may be a distraction from... photography.
Stepping down from soapbox... ;-)
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Sometimes, though not quite always, when I look at people who focus so much on which new Perfect Camera they are about to buy (and which of last year's Perfect Cameras is no longer good enough), I think that if they put half of the effort into developing their ability to see and produce photographs that they put into buying stuff that they'd probably see their photography advance by leaps and bounds.
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I have a friend who does more or less this with cars. He currently owns five. Had to add more concrete to his driveway and modify his garage to hold them all. They are very nice cars. Do they make him a better driver than, say, me? Not that I can see. ;-)
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