If you buy a top-of-the-line Digital SLR (such as the Canon EOS 1D Mark IV), but you’re not itching to take pictures with it, then it’s not the best camera (for you). If you buy an inexpensive little point-and-shoot (like the Pentax Optio 430), carry it with you everywhere, and whip it out at every opportunity to capture what’s happening in front of you and what you see, then you’ve picked a winner (for you). The best camera for me is somewhere in the middle based on the image quality I’m interested in, ease of use, size (how conspicuous I feel when I’m taking pictures), etc.

I know it’s not a very specific answer, but I feel my answer starts people thinking about how they should think about the camera they’d like to buy.

When I finished my degree earlier this year, my brother-in-law was kind enough to lend me his Nikon D200, which was a HUGE step up for me from anything I’d ever used before. The D200 wasn’t Nikon’s top of the line (that would be, at least right now, the D3S), but it certainly was a pleasure making pictures with it compared to the Nikon Coolpix 5400 I owned. I was dreading having to get through my class with that little thing. The best thing about the class, besides the opportunity for me to do a photo essay on Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, was the assignment to take a photo a day for 30 days, and then for another 30 days. We could do anything we wanted, be it ambitious, artistic, journalistic, experimental, unambitious, whatever. Getting in the habit of taking a photo a day is a very good thing, especially for someone aspiring to be a professional photographer, who will very likely be taking several photo (assignments) a day. You start carrying your camera around a lot more (if not everywhere), you start looking for photos, you talk to a lot more people, your skill with your camera improves, etc. I wrote down a list of all the benefits (on paper) that I could detect in myself and could anticipate, I’ll have to dig it up.

One of the worst things that could have happened during those two 30-day assignments was for me to think “This camera is such a pain in the butt to use that I don’t want to take a picture today.” I think there are enough internal barriers to taking pictures that to have an external one is really unnecessary. So when I didn’t take a picture (and I missed a couple days as a result of those internal barriers, days I had to catch up), it was never because of the camera, it was only me.

p.s. If you’ve never physically spot-toned a print (omg) or used Photoshop to touch up a scan, please take my word for it: Total pain in the butt. Express gratitude for digital every day.

via Laughing Squid