What I’ve Learned So Far: Seven; Gear Envy Sucks

Gear envy takes two major forms;

1. “I can’t do what I want with this crummy gear.”
2. “I can’t believe that guy/gal has such great equipment when their work sucks so bad.”

Actually envying someone by what their gear collection is – “I so wish I was him, I would be so awesome with that gear” – is more a sign of needing some professional help. Please see someone straight away.

So let’s look at number one first, the thought that you cannot shoot with your current crummy gear.

I have absolutely no sympathy for you at all. Crummy gear is better than NO gear, and it is probably better than a lot of photographers who are smoking your butt daily. Why? Because they are shooting instead of worrying that their edges are too soft if the image was blown up to the side of a house, or that awful purple fringe that no one can see anyway, or how there is a chromatic aberration when the lens is pointed at a 36 – 46 degree angle to the sun in the afternoon on alternating Tuesdays!

Give it a rest. You can make great shots on an entry level camera. You can make great shots on P&S cameras if you know how to make a good photograph. And understand the nature of the tools. And have spent anytime actually MAKING images instead of talking about them incessantly.

Think about this:

1. If you cannot take a good photograph with an entry level camera and a kit lens, what makes you think your work will be better with a shiny new D760D-X NiKanon?
2. If your pictures suck with what you have, they will most likely suck with a new camera, but now have the added fun of sucking after spending a boat load of cash.
3. Your results may vary. Listening to some photograph blather on about how the new camera from —- simply sucks the suck out of suck means only that he/she lives in a bubble somewhere since there are thousands of photographers doing amazing work with every kind of camera on the face of the earth.
4. Perhaps it isn’t your camera, maybe you suck at making photographs.
5. If your camera is not working ‘correctly’, it could be “user error”… just sayin’.
6. Bigger file sizes means bigger file sizes. That’s it.
7. Focus is not a substitute for connecting with the viewer. (Neither is pixel counts or dynamic range, but we don’t want to get too crazy.)
8. Yes, yes… that guru on all the awesome YouTubes shoots with some terribly expensive gear, and his pictures are awesomer than yours. Here is something to think about – give them your camera and watch them make the same awesomer shots.
9. Camera manufacturers pay extraordinarily big money to make you think that their new wizbang will turn your pathetic throw aways into gallery ready pix. You let that crap take hold and you will never have enough gear… ever.

Worrying about gear is a form of resistance. It’s an excuse. I ‘need’ this or I ‘need’ that, and without this or that I am in no shape to make a photograph. The gear won’t let me.

The gear doesn’t care. The gear is simply that… gear.

What matters is that you take that gear and make images that move people, and express emotion, or tell a story, or show us something we have never seen before… THAT is all that matters.

I shot a Rebel on the first CreativeLIVE I taught. The same Rebel I used for a lot of my workshops. I wanted to always be the lowest tech guy in the room. It was part of my teaching that no one in my workshops thought the quality of the image was something that came along with a great camera. Making an image is light and composition and heart.

As to the second form of Gear Envy – the one where you wonder how someone so terrible can have great equipment?

That’s easy.

They have a credit card.

{EDIT: I want to make sure we do not confuse GAS – “Gear Acquisition Syndrome” with Gear Envy. GAS is an out of control urge to collect and own vast amounts of gear for no clear reason other than it is cool. “Gear Envy” is when you think that another photographers awesome gear makes them superior photographers while your slightly dated pro-sumer is pulling you down. There is, as they say, a difference.}

Photography is indeed an art form that depends on some form of gear to create our final work. And that gear can be extravagant and expensive or simple and inexpensive. The resulting image doesn’t care where it was created, only that it WAS created.

Now before you go off thinking I don’t like great gear, well… nothing of the sort. I LOVE great equipment, and work quite hard to keep my gear in excellent condition. They are my tools, and therefor they are an extension of my own hands. And eyes.

But I don’t give gear as much power as the manufacturers think I should. I give the power to the photographer who can make images, good images with most anything you give them because they ARE photographers.

About The Author

Don Giannatti is a photographer and author based in Phoenix, Arizona. He runs the Project 52 Pros workshop for aspiring commercial and editorial photographers. You can visit his website here, online portfolio here, and his wonderful lighting essentials here. This article originally appeared here, and is a part of a broader “What I’ve Learned So Far” series which you can start reading here.