The Photography Equipment Industry

I really hope the following statement doesn’t come as a revelation to you:

The photography equipment industry’s first priority isn’t to make you an ideally equipped photographer; it is to make you an expensively equipped photographer.

It is important to bear this in mind when deciding which camera and accessories to buy. The industry spends a lot of money on marketing and advertising with a goal of separating you from as many of your dollars as possible. This doesn’t make camera manufacturers evil; they are just fulfilling their obligations to their shareholders. It does, however, mean that the onus is on you, the consumer, to do your homework.

One lesson we were taught in history classes was to learn about the historians before we drew conclusions about their versions of events. The same can be said for researching cameras and photography equipment. If you are reading an article about a particular camera, for example, it is a good idea to know something about both the writer and the publication in which it appears. Does the writer have any connections with the manufacturer? Who owns the publication, and does it carry advertising for the brand or model in question? Recently, a lens manufacturer offered prominent photography bloggers the opportunity to keep an expensive lens in return for a favorable online review. This became public knowledge only because some of the bloggers who were approached went public with the details.

I am not saying that a potentially biased writer should be ignored, because a biased source can still provide useful information. It is just a matter of knowing when to take something with a grain of salt, and recognizing the difference between marketing and unbiased reporting. That said, a good author or publication will err on the side of caution and declare any conflicts of interest, even in cases where there is nothing more than a possible perception of a conflict of interest.