I saw a post in a forum thread recently that summed up a situation that seems like it should be a red flag to those suffering from Gear Lust*. Here is the exchange, somewhat edited, beginning with the original post and followed by my reply:
OP: I know you are familiar with the situation. Your lens is in the shopping basket on Amazon, all but the last one checkout step is completed and you hover the mouse over “Order” button. And you go again and again pixel peeping, comparing MTF charts. etc etc.
ME: If you find yourself second-guessing to this extent while you are ordering, with all due respect, it is not time to be ordering a new lens.
You should be certain (or as certain as one can be) that you are ordering the right thing before you order it. By ordering while you are in that anxious and ambivalent state you are making it much more likely that your decision will not be an intelligent one, but rather one driven by irrational forces.
I urge you to make a solid and final decision about what lens you want – a decision you can make without then feeling compelled to go back and look obsessively at MTF charts and 20 reviews again – in other words, a final decision based on everything you know about the gear and your needs.
Once you think you have decided, wait. Wait about a month. One of two things will likely happen:
– If your decision does not change and you don’t find yourself second-guessing the choice, you probably made a very good choice and at the end of the waiting period you should buy the lens.
– If you find yourself worrying about the choice or second-guessing the choice or going back and poring over the test charts and reports once more, reset the one-month timer when you have really made a decision.
It is easy to become way too passionate and emotionally involved in gear purchases. Equipment is just equipment. It may (or may not) help you make better photographs, but it is not going to change your life.
* I’m not suggesting the equipment is unimportant, nor that getting good and appropriate equipment isn’t something to strive for. To the contrary, I think that making smart and appropriate decisions about equipment is very important. Gear Lust, however, is a general condition in which the search for and purchase of photography equipment becomes an obsession and ends up being more important than actually making photographs with said equipment. It is unfortunately an all-too-common malady.
G Dan Mitchell Photography
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I think that if you photograph grizzly bears you may want a longer lens! ;-)
Dan
I may have just rationalized my situation and convinced myself that gear isn’t important because I can’t afford better gear. Quite honestly though I don’t think even if I could afford to buy fifty lenses I would. I’m still getting along with my Canon 20D (purchased in 2004) and a handful of lenses. And while I would love to upgrade I think it’s in my interest to just run this one into the ground before jumping up to the next tier.
Honestly I think there is a great deal to be said for the generative constraint of just having a couple lenses at your disposal and for that matter developing an understanding of the particulars of each lens and knowing them intimately (where do they get soft, where is the sweet spot, how do they flare, how do they operate in low light, etc.).
To that end I hate the time spent changing lenses more than anything (probably because I started as a photojournalist and I’m afraid I’ll miss something). I hate it more than freezing my tail off hiking to a great spot to catch a sunrise, and much more than having to work my way closer to an animal because all I have on me is a 50mm and a wide angle.
Then again maybe I’m just rationalizing it and secretly we all want gear, but I think not.
David, you are right about that – and we might not even limit it to technology purchases! :-)
I don’t always wait a month to make my purchases, but I am certain about what I need when I make the purchase. The “wait a month” ritual is something that I did do at one point, and it helped me understand and get past the blinding effects of “purchase lust.”
I don’t fully understand the psychology at work here, but I know that when we are in the throes of desiring some thing that we risk losing our ability to think rationally about it. The thing starts to loom as the biggest thing in our lives and we can truly become obsessed. After the fact, once the thing is in hand, we often discover that we overestimated its importance and the role it would play in our work, our play, our lives.
The idea of “the wait,” is to take the “gear lust” stage to its end point – the purchase decision – and then not purchase until the irrational symptoms disappear. That is the reason for resetting the clock if you develop doubt about the decision.
I’m still surprised to hear that people actually go all the way through the online ordering process and then, as they are about to click that final submit button, are still not certain that they want to make the purchase… but many of them apparently do click this button still.
Dan
Good, sane advice, Dan. Probably could be applied to any technology purchase or even any major purchase of any kind. Another good question to ask yourself is: Will I still be able to live just fine without this new ______?
Personally, I’m waiting for the f/.9 567mm OptoLuminescent SuperGigatron EgoMatic SuperWhamulator Model II version 2b… ;-)
Dan
Buying a lens simply because of MTF charts or simply because it looks cool is just plain dumb. A lens purchase should be based upon how it fits into your workflow … that being said, I’m still lusting over the Schneider Super Symmar-XL 110mm f4.5 …. :)
Great advice Dan.