What is a Stop Worth, and the Meaning of Life

[charlie]

You sure are judging me.

My apologies, Ron, I didn't intend to offend, just disagree and I could have been more graceful in my response. And just to be clear I enjoy looking at your photos and wasn't insinuating that your work is not worthy of your equipment. My point was that I don't see how it is anyone else's business who uses what equipment and for what reasons.

Jakov summed up what I was thinking, and much more eloquently I might add. Gary also made some excellent points on the matter.

[golunvolo]

I need that extra stop, that slightly faster and silent auto-focus, that better high iso...   But that just me. Still, going places is better.

[Frank Fremerey]

A good friend once told me: "every new lens you add to your equipment will devalue all the other lenses that you have."

Do I have to explain?

In other words: my shooting experience with a 50-mm-prime is so huge that I can survive any day and most jobs with one.

Any 24-mm-prime is of less worth to me because I only spent a few hundred hours with 24-mm-lenses.

Any hour I spend with another lens I do not spend to master the others.

85 and 50 are body parts. 35 ist growing fast on me.



All other stuff is specialized. Macro. Table Top. Repro. Panorama.

[Jakov Minić]

A good friend once told me: "every new lens you add to your equipment will devalue all the other lenses that you have."

Do I have to explain?

Yes Frank, please elaborate more.   
How any good lens that I add to my line-up devalues the ones that I already have.
I don't value a lens by the amount of hours I use it, but by the results it produces when I use it.

Can the negative analogy be made to children too?
With every child a mother gives birth to it devalues the children that she already has?!?!

[Frank Fremerey]

A child is an Entity not a tool.

A tool gains value the more you use it. I do not grasp how to use a zoom. That is why I use primes. 24mm is great fir me wirking from a tripod inarchitecture but I am  unhappy with most of my handheld 24mm shots. You learn to master the tool by using it.

A child has a value of his own. It profits of every hour you spend with it. The more children you have the less hours you spend with any of them in a one by one relation but one by one is not a necessity.

[Gary]

A good friend once told me: "every new lens you add to your equipment will devalue all the other lenses that you have."

Do I have to explain?

In other words: my shooting experience with a 50-mm-prime is so huge that I can survive any day and most jobs with one.

Any 24-mm-prime is of less worth to me because I only spent a few hundred hours with 24-mm-lenses.

Any hour I spend with another lens I do not spend to master the others.

85 and 50 are body parts. 35 ist growing fast on me.

All other stuff is specialized. Macro. Table Top. Repro. Panorama.

For me, there is a lot of merit in what Frank has said ... at least in mastering the lens ... the devaluation part is highly arguable.

When I was growing up, way way back in the film-only days, money and material things were much more precious and harder to obtain than objects of desire are now. One purchased a SLR with a 50mm. You mastered that 50mm, you shot the hell out of it until you knew that lens inside out, like it was your right hand. You knew exactly how it performed at f/2.8 or f/11, you memorized the FOV to where you knew the frame/composition without having to bring the camera up to your eye. After reaching a certain point of usage/mastering you felt it was time to move on and you purchased your next lens. (The whole time spent mastering the 50mm you were saving for the next lens.) You didn't need to go on a forum and ask strangers what your next lens purchase should be ... you knew after shooting the hell out of the 50 if you needed to go wide or long with your next purchase.

Once you decided on the second lens, you shot the hell out of that lens until mastering. Et Cetera. That was how you learned photography and built up your system. When I was working news, lenses were an extension of my eyes and the camera an extension of my hands. Manipulation of the settings was performed semi-automatically, never pulling my face from the viewfinder, concentrating nearly all my brain power on composition and capturing the story. Back then zooms were quite crappy, zoom lenses were like the bottoms of Coke bottles, so changing lenses in a fast moving environment had to be precise, there wasn't much room for error. Intimately knowing the FOV and DOF of each lens makes the difference between success or being scooped by the competition and getting your butt creamed by an editor, between keeping your job or getting fired.

I am a very strong proponent of what Frank is saying. It is a slow and painful process, but it does make you a better photographer than not mastering your equipment. Buying a whole lot of stuff is a lot more fun, but a lot of unmastered equipment dilutes the photographic process and will stretch out the learning curve.

While most of us here are hobbyists, the advantages of mastering a lens are not as valuable as they would be for a professional (especially when shooting news where speed is critical). But there is still a ton of value to be able to mentally compose your images at different FOV's and DOF's. To be so comfortable with your equipment that it is next to nothing to pick up and use a different camera. When how a camera/lens feels in your hand is the last factor you use when purchasing equipment.

[Ron Scubadiver]

It never fails to amaze me how much shooting I can get out of a 50.

[Erik Lund]

I have family in USA so I can relate to the issues raised here and I find it worrying... Ron you raise some very interesting points! Below follows my thoughts on this but with no direct one to one connection...
 
Here is the situation in my case in the tiny country called Denmark.
I'm a single father of three boys and a semi pro I work for a big company where I shoot about 15% of my working days and I have a small one man photography company on the side as well as shooting voluntarily for the boy scouts when needed.
Makes for a good opportunity to shoot the kids growing up - I feel lucky about that and I fully enjoyed shooting kids playing football with a 300mm 2.8...
In Denmark we have free education like in Norway...
My boys have been brought up to work for their 'own' money they need for themselves, now the two above 18 take care of themselves for apartment, furniture's and food etc. the one turning 16 is in a boarding school I pay for, as well as I pay for cloths etc.

And then I came to think about this;

Here in Denmark we have something called Janteloven, here follows some excerpts from Wikipedia:

The Jante Law as a concept was created by the Dano-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose;
Generally used colloquially in Denmark and the rest of the Nordic countries as a sociological term to negatively describe a condescending attitude towards individuality and success, the term refers to a mentality that de-emphasises individual effort and places all emphasis on the collective, while discouraging those who stand out as achievers.

The ten rules state:
1.You're not to think you are anything special.
2.You're not to think you are as good as we are.
3.You're not to think you are smarter than we are.
4.You're not to convince yourself that you are better than we are.
5.You're not to think you know more than we do.
6.You're not to think you are more important than we are.
7.You're not to think you are good at anything.
8.You're not to laugh at us.
9.You're not to think anyone cares about you.
10.You're not to think you can teach us anything.
These ten principles or commandments are often claimed to form the "Jante's Shield" of the Scandinavian people.
In the book, the Janters who transgress this unwritten 'law' are regarded with suspicion and some hostility, as it goes against the town's communal desire to preserve harmony, social stability and uniformity.
An eleventh rule recognised in the novel as 'the penal code of Jante' is:
11.Perhaps you don't think we know a few things about you?

It actually applies to a Forum like this as well... A small community where we know each other quite well...

Just a heads up from Denmark

[Erik Lund]

It never fails to amaze me how much shooting I can get out of a 50.

I feel the same, although I now prefer a 35mm and to step one step closer for better 'contact' with the subject

[elsa hoffmann]

Interesting post Erik.

I was once told "we all think we are better than we really are"

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Aksel Sandemose is the only Nobel Prize candidate I ever met in person ...  A highly eccentric and memorable personality.

The Law of Jante is from the novel "A Fugitive Crosses his Tracks" (1933) and the book is very readable if you focus on the underlying motifs and text lines.

[Gary]

Interesting Erik. I think most governments strive to implement those 'commandments'. Somehow, after reading your Jante post, I thought of the Ben Franklin quote of "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” In my little cream cheese brain I can associate/contrast the Jante Law with giving up our liberties.   

[simsurace]

Generally used colloquially in Denmark and the rest of the Nordic countries as a sociological term to negatively describe a condescending attitude towards individuality and success...

(emphasis by me)

Do I get this correctly that the attitudes expressed in the "law" are widespread in Scandinavian countries, but not generally viewed as desirable? Or the other way round? I got confused between your statements and the wikipedia excerpt, and don't really see the connection to the original post, except perhaps that the guy wielding an expensive camera could be seen as sticking out of the uniformity and thereby violate the commandments?! Also how exactly does it apply to the forum?

Anyway thanks for sharing, interesting bit of information I didn't know!

[Erik Lund]

You both understand correctly, the Jantelov is not regarded as a positive thing...

The similarity between a forum or a site and the Jantelov is that; The book is about a relatively small tightly knit community where more or less everybody know each other...

So put these two together and sometimes I can see Jantloven come into action, as a 'negative pointing fingers' type of remark on behalf of 'the community'.

I hope you get it  If not please google Janteloven and seek perhaps a more educated version 

[Ron Scubadiver]

My concern is, and I hope this is obvious, not limited to photography.  It is about excessive reliance on purchasing material goods as a means to achieve happiness.  Like the relief a smoker shows when they light up, this relief is temporary.  Overspending in the US economy can produce a situation where one does not meet their obligations to others like their children, or even themselves due to a failure to save for retirement.  The situation is very different in Scandinavia as the State assures many benefits that we pay for ourselves here.  Taxes are a lot higher too.  In the sink or swim world one does have a lot more freedom to mess their life up financially.

The government employee I mentioned was closer to a Scandinavian than most people in the US.  He and his wife were childless, he had much better than average job security and the assurance of a generous pension.  Perhaps what caught my attention was when he brought up "saving for a 200-400" out of the clear blue along with why an amateur would pick a D3 over a D700.  It was a lot of little things about how I read him.  Anyway, I hope he is happy and found his 200-400 before the price went up.

Although I may be critical of certain kinds of behavior, I firmly believe in a person's right to make choices.  At the same time I wonder what will happen with the mountain of student debt and large numbers of folks who are aging past their peak earnings and are close to broke.  The progressives' solution is to raise taxes and send the bill to those who did save and prosper.