Episode 14 of my irregular photo journal - Sometimes a little bit of GAS isn’t too bad
Every photographer has had it at least once. Many know it as GAS which is short for “Gear Acquisition Syndrome". You keep looking at the next thing to buy. You keep thinking that this is the camera that will elevate your creativity to never-before-seen heights. Or that the lens you’ve been drooling over will finally allow you to unleash the creative master you’ve always felt dormant somewhere deep within you. Of course, many of us have gotten past that feeling when we realised it’s not the camera that makes a photographer. It’s the vision, the skill, the determination, and constant repetition. Once you know what you’re doing and what you want to capture, you can do so regardless of whether you’re using the latest A7R V from Sony, or an analogue Pentax KM from decades ago.
Sure, having all those new bells and whistles helps and it can make the final outcome better in terms of sharp focus or image quality, but those are not the defining qualities of a timeless photograph. More often than not the camera we already possess does the job just fine and we should concentrate on the making, not the buying.
I’m fairly happy to say I’ve been more or less immune to GAS for the better part of the decade now. Ever since I got my first Fujifilm camera around the year 2013. I did upgrade a few times, but it was never really a GAS kind of a buy. It always just made monetary sense. I had worked in multiple camera stores so the deals I got including great trade-in prices made it so I barely usually had to pay anything extra. Especially considering all of my “upgrades” were bought used and cheap.
So whether it was the camera department of Selfridges on Oxford Street, Jessops, WEX Photo Video in Whitechapel, or my current job at Megapixel in Prague I never really felt the need to buy the latest and greatest gear even though I was constantly surrounded by it. I think it’s partly due to the fact I get to at least try all of it which lets me look past the hype and the “grass is always greener” phenomenon. I get to experience buyer’s remorse before even buying the piece of equipment.
All that said, I finally cracked and bought a camera on day one of its release. And I am bloody glad I did. Because it did one thing to me that I haven’t been doing since maybe 2017 and that is going out shooting before or after work multiple times a week. Nearly daily. If you follow my blog you can probably guess which one it is since I got a review unit a few weeks before the announcement and I loved using it so much that I even said I’m gonna buy it. The last time I was this excited about a new camera which has made me shoot so much was back when I got my X-Pro1.
My thoughts on the camera can be read in my review here. I’ve not even used it for a month and I already managed to get more daily street photographs than I did the last year. I take it with me everywhere and that’s what it is all about. The best camera is the one you not only have with you, but the one you also enjoy using. So yeah… A bit of GAS can be good from time to time. It definitely helped me in this instance.
Here’s a selection if you’re curious as to what it can do.
