Cheap Thrills

I was moved to comment on a recent post on Mike Johnston's TOP blog which centred on computer monitors recommended for photography. Frankly, I was amazed that monitors costing two thousand dollars were being discussed as if they were an affordable essential for the serious photographer, and that one coming in at around one thousand dollars might even be regarded as a bit of bargain. My (admittedly sarcastic) comment was: "A thousand dollars plus for a monitor? I have to say it's a relief to see there are so many ways photography can be restored to its preserve as a rich man's hobby..."

Now, I'm aware that Mike doesn't enjoy being mocked or contradicted (who does?), so I did give it some thought before hitting return (or whatever we are calling the big bent button these days), but he took it well, and even featured the comment with a thoughtful reply. But one reason Mike's regular flights into gear-head fantasy-land bother me is that his income is largely propped up by widow's mite Patreon contributions from the likes of me. It does not sit well when that money – and, to my mind, often eye-wateringly large chunks of it – is spent on quixotic gear purchases, like the recent purchase of a Sigma FP kit (cost: ~ $2000) for conversion to a monochrome-only sensor (cost: $1200). All because he has some quasi-mystical thing about the difference – allegedly felt at the time of taking the freakin' photo – between knowing whether there is a colour sensor or a monochrome-only sensor in the camera. Well, OK, call me mean-spirited, but  – as I have commented out loud before on TOP – it seems to me that Mike is a rich man trapped in a poor man's body (or, at least, in a poor man's bank account) [1]. A man's gotta learn to cut his coat according to his cloth, and all that. Tough love, c'est moi.

Look, gearsplaining just annoys me, especially when it strays into the stratospheric region where the finer points of comparison between the gold-plated and the platinum-plated Best of the Best are debated, like connoisseurs discussing the character of wines that cost rather more than my customary limit of £10 (rising to £15 at Christmas). Mike runs one of the best photo-oriented blogs available on the Web, but there seems to be an increasing amount of this sort of upscale hi-tech window-shopping. Which may appeal to his typical readership, of course, who (if the comments are any measure) are largely men who never seem happier than when engaging in upscale hi-tech window-shopping. I suppose that to maintain the popularity and longevity of a blog a high degree of convergence with the majority audience is probably required. Which may go a long way to explaining the paucity of visitors here.

As many have observed, running in parallel with photography as a means of making pictures is a related but essentially different pastime which mainly involves comparing and justifying the purchase of the latest offerings from the photographic industry. Popular websites like Digital Photography Review exist for no other reason. Now, I am by no means a poor man – when my various sources of retirement income are added up, I'm on something like our national median wage without even getting out of bed – but I am still far from rich, and (more to the point) notoriously reluctant to part with money. Certainly, the cost of most new photographic equipment is way beyond what I am prepared to spend. I bought my main camera, a second-hand Fuji X-T1, in November 2016, and as yet see absolutely no reason to consider "upgrading" to its latest iteration, the X-T5, priced at £1,689, body only. Ouch! My X-T1 still works as well as it ever did, still takes the same excellent photos, and at 16 MP does not fill up my hard drive at the rate the 40 MP images of the X-T5 would. And who, in the name of Sandisk and Western Digital, actually needs a 40 MP camera? True, in moments of weakness I do occasionally lust after the Hasselblad X1D, possibly the sexiest camera ever made, but the ludicrous price of those Hasselblad lenses is a sufficient bucket of cold water to bring me back to my senses. Nearly £5,000 for a standard zoom? Oof! Forgive me, Fuji, my darling, what was I thinking? Could I have a towel, please?

When it comes to my computer kit, I'm still using the perfectly adequate HP 2011x monitor I originally bought for my daughter rather more than a decade ago (having failed to notice that she, like most of the population, was entirely happy with her laptop screen). The price of its equivalent today is about £150; in other words, I could buy ten of them for the price of one of the monitors discussed in Mike's post. It is attached to my ancient HP Pavilion 500 "tower" PC, with a wire-connected keyboard on which the labels of various letters have worn off, hampering my two-fingered "hunt and peck" typing somewhat. I use an old cut-down version of Photoshop from 2011, Photoshop Elements 10, as my primary photo-editing software, along with Photo Ninja for raw conversion and image "library" browsing. My most extravagant purchase has probably been my A3+ Epson SureColor P400 printer: I felt I owed it to any potential print-buyers to at least sell them an archival pigment-ink print. At some point, no doubt, it will all need to be replaced, but I'll still be shopping at the "budget" end of the market, even though I don't really need to. When it comes to conspicuous consumption, I'm a black-clad puritan, frowning at designer labels and disdaining hi-tech ostentation.

I concede that, in a world on fire, there's an element of self-serving hypocrisy there: I'm not exactly living an off-grid life of eco-friendly simplicity. My bike is rusting in the shed; I can't now remember where our wind-up torch and radio actually are; I buy stuff from Amazon. But, the politics of consumerism in a world of finite resources and impending climate disaster aside (now there's a subordinate clause to conjure with), the real point is this: are my photographs and digital images inferior to those produced on state-of-the-art equipment? In some technical respects, yes, of course they are; but nobody other than a gear-head would ever notice. Would I be happier and more fulfilled if I walked out of the house carrying ten grand's worth of camera, and returned home to process the resulting images on twenty grand's worth of computer kit? Absolutely not. No more than I'd be happier driving a brand-new Jaguar rather than our Skoda Citigo [2]. Of course, anyone who does regularly spent megabucks on their gear-accumulation hobby will, understandably, disagree. But have they ever got around to producing any actual photographs that are worth a second look? And, if they have, are they in any meaningful way "better" than mine? Well, modesty (an essential puritanical trait) forbids...

1. Plus, whisper it, as a serial bolter when it comes to his enthusiasms, I give it a year, max, before that camera joins its predecessors on the shelf, despite any professions of eternal photo-fealty to the new toy tool. But then, why should we care? It's such fun to watch!

2. The Citigo, like many of today's small petrol-driven cars, is remarkably fuel-efficient. It has just three cylinders (!) but will travel from Southampton to Bristol at motorway speeds without the fuel gauge needle moving from "full": I was convinced it had jammed, the first time we made the trip.