Which camera is best?

This month's photo tip is an answer to a question that I’ve been asked many times: “Which camera is best?” or “Hey Mark, which camera do you think I should buy for me or my relative?” Most people don’t care which camera is actually the best, but they want to give photography a try, hoping they’re going to find their new passion or shoot 100 images and master the craft. But that’s sort of where our world is right now, isn’t it? Everything is fast. You can watch a YouTube video offering shortcuts that will supposedly shorten the time it takes to become proficient at a craft. Life is running at microwave speed. For years I’ve followed the photography of a man named Chase Jarvis, and his answer to the question about the best camera is  “The one in your hand.” 

Usually that answer is met with the sound of crickets or “... but…. but…” The biggest hurdles in the art of photography are experience, time, failure, and then learning from failure. And above all else, to actually be a good, solid photographer you need to understand light. George Eastman, the founder of the Eastman Kodak Co. once said, “Light makes photography. Embrace light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.” So after all that, why is the answer to the best camera question, “the one in your hand?” Because with that camera, or cell phone camera, you need to explore everything that camera can do. When the decisive moment, the one you want to capture, reveals itself to you, you will have mastered your camera and the knowledge of light so that the photograph you make is more beautiful, more storytelling, and more shareable than any photo anyone else captured who was there at that same moment. What is “the decisive moment,” you ask? Check back next month and find out.