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Saturday, 19 February 2005 |
Among the various opinion wars raging in the photographic hobby world is of course the digital vs film debate. But the kind of hardcore opinions that can be seen in various web forums on this subject is not a new thing.
Other equipment debates have been going on over the years, and some are still going strong... One of those debate is the Canon vs Nikon war, which fans of either companies claim to be won by their favorite camera and lens maker each time a new product comes out.
The Japanese vs German lenses debate is also still raging, with some people holding on very hard to the beleif that German lenses are the best, either with the Leitz or the Carl Zeiss (Or Rodenstock or Schneider..) name on them...
Some people would defend their Leica with their lives, or their Hasselblads, or their Deardorffs, or whatever mythic camera they own or hold dear... (please note that I didn't use the word "use", because a lot of the equipment debates are made on a theoretical level, on MTF cuves and lpm numbers...)
The underlying reason is difficult to discern, a camera is a tool, right ? It's just the mechanical and optical apparatus that takes the photographer's idea and helps him expose film. It's nothing more, right ?
Well, for some people cameras are status symbols, just like cars can be... When you use this or that camera, which either was used by some famous photographer or is really really expensive, it makes you feel like a better photographer.
Cartier-Bresson used a Leica, therefore if I want to make pictures as good as Cartier-Bresson's I have to use a Leica... Most professional photographers don't think that way, and usually use whatever tool is best for the job, but many of the photographers populating the online communities are not professionals, and some tend to be a little too religious about their "weapon of choice" ...
Me ? well, I'm not completely immune, I have a Nikon F4, which is I think one of the best 35mm camera ever made, I have a Hasselblad (affectionnaly dubbed the "Swedish cube"), which is one of the most widely known status-symbol camera, and well, I shoot in large and ultra-large format, which I do in part because of the richness of the process, because I can do contact prints and use interesting and exotic techniques, and also because it is "exotic", period.
This has been one of the central points of my life in the last few years: striving to be different, to be the guy doing strange stuff. Doing my Ph.D on Extreme environments, getting involved in historical swordfighting, getting involved in ULF photography, getting married at 24, selling my digital photography gear and going back to film, packing my stuff and moving from Quebec to Brussels. I like going against the current, but not too much. I'm also a big trend follower, I have a Mac and an iPod, I publish a blog, I try to be involved in the traditional photography community, I read "The Da Vinci code" and Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket...
I like being different, just like every one else... |
