Why I review photography equipment.
Why did I decide to review photography equipment?
I'm a professional portrait and wedding photographer. My aim is to provide the information I would be looking for when trying to decide if something would help or hinder my photography business. You won't find specification details ad nauseam, or comparisons between the incomparable, but you will find out how this professional photographer rates the equipment for professional use.
For years I have trawled the internet looking for information about various photography products and to some extent photography techniques and dare I admit it - ideas!
The result of my fishing expeditions can best be described as a mixed bag. The last straw was a review about a zoom lens. It went something like this:
...the zoom lens is great at this and good at that but for optical quality it isn't as good as a 50mm prime lens...
What? Run that by me again? Turning that around the reviewer might just as well have said:
...the prime lens isn't as good at changing its focal length as a zoom lens....
D'oh!
There are good reviews out there but there is also much of this nonsense around, making comparisons with the incomparable or talking up
features the vast majority of owners will never use except when they first take the gear out of its box and thumb through the instruction
manual.
As a professional I need to know various things and they are all this:
Can I make money out of this product?
On the face of it you might think that is a little harsh, but you would be wrong. Consider the example of a lens. Optical quality is important I hear you say, what about pin cushion distortion or chromatic aberation or any number of other things? And you would be right but it still boils down to "will the lens produce a photo good enough to sell?" - in other words can I make money out of this product? You see I'm right.
If you are obsessed by megapixels or MTF charts (Modulation Transfer Function) or the exact weight of a camera body you will find my reviews frustratingly uninformative. If you want a spec sheet or a manual we all know where the manufacturers websites are. However if you want to know whether the product will help you as a professional photographer pay the mortgage then I hope you find something useful in my reviews. If precise resolution is a genuine issue I will talk about megapixels. If I discuss the physics of optics then an MTF chart might well appear.
Above all my reviews are free of speculation, either about photographic equipment I have used or about competing equipment I haven't used, I'll just stick to what I know. But if it doesn't address the central question that I as a professional need to have an answer for: "Can I make money out of this product?", then I hope not to write about it.
The reviews are not intended to be finished articles. I may well go back and add stuff as I think of it, even if the equipment is no longer available to purchase new. If you think I have made a glaring omission then please email me and I will add something if I think I have relevant experience and a view to offer.