The camera does make a difference

As you know if you are a regular here, I’ve really gotten into photography in the past couple of years.  As part of that, I’ve read many books and many a website.  One common theme that comes up is just how unimportant your actual equipment is in the grand scheme of things.  Now, I realize far too many people just shell out for a Canon DSLR, don’t bother to learn anything, and then think they are going to have great pictures (they won’t).  But when you have some idea of what you are doing, the equipment really does make a difference.

For example, my wife posted this photo I took of Sarah last week at Topsail Island Soundside park on Facebook and people have been raving about it.

Now, I’ll give myself some credit for recognizing a great pose when I see it, having a decent feel for composition, and quite purposefully looking to take advantage of the phenomenal light an hour before sunset– all of which is stuff I’ve learned in the past couple years– but if this photo was not taken with a DSLR (I love my Olympus E620) and telephoto lens I could not have gotten the shallow depth of field and great bokeh that make the image really pop.   Now, sure, this would be a nice photo with any camera, but using reasonably high quality equipment really does make a considerable difference.

One of the things I realized early in my photographic interest is that the vast majority of what people consider to be higher quality/artistic images have shallow depth of field and significant bokeh.  Quite simply, regardless of your other skills you can only get that with the right equipment.

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