Ken Rockwell ha detto:

Your Camera Doesn't Matter: Gianmichele wrote from Italy that he bought a camera. His girlfriend got them a trip to New York so he could take pictures.

While there, she wanted a to take some pictures, too, so she borrowed his camera and here's what she snapped. She didn't know anything about photography, and especially knew nothing about cameras.

Photography is all about the ability to see. Cameras do all the technical stuff so we don't have to. It's not the 1950s anymore. All we need to know is some very basic adjustments and just go shoot.

The shots on her gallery? All made with a mere Nikon D80, and the lens? Not even the kit lens or a zoom: she used a fixed 50mm lens for everything.

I wish I shot this well! Italians have the knack when it comes to art.

Gianmichele asked what I thought about her now wanting to go take photography classes. "Why?" I asked. Does it look look she's missing anything? I can't imagine how her photos could get any better!

For people with vision, photo classes only confuse with rules that no longer apply, and never did. Photo classes were needed in the 1950s, but today, interested people should be taking art, drawing, painting, color and seeing classes instead. The good photographers have degrees in art and painting, not in photography. Ansel Adams studied music, never photography. Jay Maisel has a degree in painting from Yale, not photography.

Some people spend all day in front of a computer trying to make photos happen that never will. Photos happen in the camera. Rules, pixels, MTFs, RAW and HDR have nothing to do with photography. All they do is distract people from ever making any real photos.

I usually make my best shots when I head out with just one lens on my camera. I can concentrate on seeing and not on swapping lenses. Henri Cartier-Bresson used just a 50mm lens for decades and decades. Oh yes - Cartier-Bresson studied at numerous art schools. Louis Daguerre, inventor of the Daguerreotype, was a painter, too.

Have you noticed that the only people telling you to buy a better camera are people trying to sell you one, like camera salesmen, camera companies, magazines and websites that get paid to advertise cameras, or photographers, friends and instructors who are trying to justify their own purchases of too much equipment?

I've never met any genuinely accomplished photographer who told anyone that they needed to buy a better camera. Plenty of photo writers will tell you that, but not accomplished photographers.