Many of you indicate that you think you may already own your last camera. Heck, it might even be your cell phone ;~).
So why are you still reading about cameras on a camera Web site?
Actually, I know the answer to that: because just having the camera doesn't mean you know how to use it as well as you could. I've written a lot of articles over the years that address bits of this (like "Blame the Equipment"). But here's the concise list of what you need to do:
- Understand how your last camera is controlled. Read the manual again. And again. Or read my book on it and refer to it again when you have questions. Have you memorized the sequence of things you need to set a manual white balance? To set bracketing? To change the ambient/flash balance? If you answer no to virtually any of those questions (and many more that I can come up with), then you don't know your last camera well enough.
- Know what the best results your last camera can achieve really is. I have to admit I'm not sure that I've done enough on this site to help you with that, and I'm still puzzling how best to do that. But I'll work on it. Still, have you really looked around at what others are achieving (have achieved) with your last camera? It's worth knowing what various pros are using so you can pay attention to the results they're achieving with it. Many pros have "what's in my bag" laying somewhere around on their site. Making a perfect connection between gear and an image is a little difficult if they aren't labeled that way (which is why photo magazines tend to tell you), but most pros don't change gear all that often. Attend a slide show or presentation by someone good who's using what you use. See if those are the results you're getting.
- Figure out the boundaries. How big can you print with your last camera? Really, figure it out. How low can the light be that you can photograph in? Yes, figure that out, too. Your last camera has some limitations, but you need to know out what they are. If you have no idea what those boundaries are, you actually don't know if you have your last camera.
- Make sure you have the photographic stuff down cold. I write about capture discipline a lot (do the following Google search: "capture discipline" site:bythom.com). Make sure you've got that part nailed down. Need to practice? Take out your iPhone and try to get your capture discipline up with that! Yep. If you can get it right with a simple camera like that, you're on your way to doing it with the Big Boy Last Camera you picked. Go ahead, try it. Use your casual drive-by picture-taking technique with your iPhone on a static subject. Now actually try using the iPhone like it was the world's best camera and needed you to pay attention to every bit of capture discipline to extract all it offers. Funny thing, capture discipline works with cheap cameras as well as expensive. It'll work with your last camera, too.
- Relax and enjoy what you've got. You can't make your last camera do something it's not capable of. You're not going to get 10 foot prints from a D2h in a single image that compete with Peter Lik's stuff, so don't try. In step 3 you learned something about the boundaries (I hope ;~), so just respect them. There's a slim possibility--okay, make that a huge possibility for some of you--that you can't just relax and enjoy, that those boundaries really frustrate you. Congratulations, you're still in the market to buy your last camera.