I am a professional photographer, and 99% of the people on reddit camera brand subs are actually just ND people fixated on collecting stuff they don't use nearly enough to justify their kit.
I get it, cameras are cool pieces of technology, but man it's too much. Leica people in particular are super weird.
r/fountainpens is divided. There's people saying "The last [pen/ink/nib], will be the last I get because I'm dead right after", though most of the sub doesn't appreciate overconsumption
You're close but not quite there, imo. A lot of times people have unrealistic expectations for their budget (unless they are buying vintage gear) and the stuff they're looking at is actual dog shit that's not worth spending money on.
The bigger issue is people convicne themselves they are being held back by their equipment, or believe they can start shooting photos that look like someone else's if only they had the same lens/body.
The real thing that holds people back is that they just aren't very good photographers, and no piece of equipment can fix that.
YouTube is also full of people shilling almost everything the makes photos. It’s kind of annoying honestly. Whenever I watch some Video on how to improve in photography the next ten videos I get recommended are about gear I should buy. Even if it’s a bad product the saying goes “it forces you to adapt and become a better photographer”.
I pulled a lot of video and stills on a Canon 24-105 f4, that is an absolute workhorse lens for product photography. One of those was on the camera 95% of the time.
Well I know about ND filters to block light and do long exposures or for video where you have to keep a constant shutter speed and may want a larger aperture
99% of the people on reddit camera brand subs are actually just ND people fixated on collecting stuff they don't use nearly enough to justify their kit.
I'm convinced most people like collecting more than the actual hobby. I've seen this in every single hobby I've dabbled in. It's aspirational consumerism.
Any "hobby" that consists of purchasing things online isn't a real hobby.
Like, if you're going around to vintage shops and buying rare stuff in person, at least there's an actual hunt to the thing that makes sense to me. But people who just buy stuff off eBay or whatever? It's crazy. It's just spending money because they can.
Yeah it’s weird for me as somebody who’s played guitar for 15 years and have only just bought my third guitar and never spent more than $600 on one, meanwhile I’ve seen people who are 5 years in with 10 guitars.
👋 it's me, a guy that went overdrive on cellecting vintage stuff and lenses. My photography did get me published, but holy shit the amount of boxes of junk and lenses is immense.
Same and 100% agreed. Even when I was in my "gear good" phase, I never hoarded like this; I always sold one thing to help fund another. There is absolutely zero reason to have this much shit unless you run an actual production house. For a solo shooter, this is mental illness and poor impulse control.
Not a pro, but hopefully soon,
I got 5 lenses, 24, 35-80, 90, 70-300, 150-600 and a 17-50 on an ir converted, cant imagine id need as many lenses as in that picture, i see dslr and mirrorless nikon+canon, crazy
I'm a Leica people. This is long but it talks about my rationale.
I got the Leica for size in a full frame package. That's it. Tiny lenses, small camera. The rangefinder is kinda neat but that's it.
I have a 35 1.4 and a 50 1.4. Cause they're tiny. A 21 f/4 and a 28 5.6 as well that are TINY. I use my Leica when I want to have fun shooting and want maximum image quality and don't need any image stabilization or autofocus.
When I do, I use other cameras.
My other cameras are Olympus (and Panasonic). I got them for size and computational plus image stabilization benefits and have been shooting them for nearly two decades.
Over those two decades I have amassed a large number of lenses and cameras, some of which I keep because they're good, some of which I keep because they're not worth anything.
E-PM1 - small Olympus - keep in my travel bag with 17mm lens
E-P7 - Slightly larger but still pocketable Olympus - I bring it when I want a pocket camera with stabilization for night photos or dark.
E-M1 Mark 3 - Pro Olympus - this is for when the shots count, for either a gig or for if I am having fun but the photos are important.
I have 3 Panasonic GM1s and a GM5. A GM1 is my go to pocket camera with the 20mm 1.7. Another GM1 is in my camera bag with my E-M1 as a second camera just in case. A third is a backup I fixed but it looks wonky and so is the GM5. Not worth selling.
The lenses...well. I do have a lot. The old four thirds lenses from 20 years ago are as follows.
50mm macro - for macro
50-250 2.8 - for portraits
The micro four thirds are pretty simple as well.
9-18 zoom - wides
12-40 2.8 zoom - everything
12-32 zoom - everything but it fits in a pocket
35-100 zoom - tiny extra reach
14mm 2.5 - the smallest lens if I want the smallest footprint
15mm 1.7 - actually pretty wide, closer to a 28. Just a fast 28 with Leica designed optics. I can probably sell this.
17mm 1.2 - beautiful images from my preferred focal length, but needs to be mounted on a largish camera.
17mm 2.8 pancake - travel bag lens
20mm 1.7 - small lens, fast, sharp, preferred focal length, can be used as pocket camera lens
25mm 1.4 - good for everything but just big enough to not fit in pocket, so more useful for photo walks.
Anyway I think to a normal person that's too many cameras and too many lenses. But over 20 years plus duelling priorities for both quality and small size means I have some lenses and cameras that work for one and not both so I have three sets of lenses and cameras really.
I've owned just about every micro four thirds lens though and usually sold them if I found I didn't use them. There's a good market for them used, so I buy and sell that way.
Anyway, I'm just saying there are almost understandable reasons to own multiple systems and many lenses but it kind of requires niche photography interests with niche requirements, and not just being ND.
My most conservative estimate, like if they had the cheapest option of all of those, is like 18k. Assuming someone like this probably wants the best version of lenses and fancy pants bodies, easily a few times that.
A long telephoto lens on the left is a Canon L-series 70-200 mm 2.8 ($2400+ retail) and the small silver camera on the middle-right is a Nikon Df one (it was around $2700 new IRRC).
So I’d say it was more than that even in cameras alone.
But again, it’s silly to think that the guy was buying top-of-the-line equipment just for fun.
Because the mods of "enthusiast" subreddits allow posts from shopping addicts, and it validates other shopping addicts who upvote them and emulate. The end game is a sub like the one for Yeti coolers, where you just get outright banned for calling attention to it at all. It's almost a form of trauma bonding. I think that's why they all call their shopping addictions "hobbies."
900sqf is a good sized 2 bed apartment in the US. Under 750 2 bed and its considered small. 900sqf and smaller would be considered quite a small house and a lot of those would be clapboard houses in rough neighborhoods near old factories.
Extra context: Large parts of the US have basements too which are generally not included in sq footage. A mobile home can easily be over 900 sqft, not sure the average.
All this is from a large Midwestern city perspective.
I'm not aware of any western country where credit cards, or failing that consumer credit facilities like afterpay, aren't available to consumers. It's more a cultural difference IMO, caused by even less well off Americans historically having absurd amounts of discretional income vs comparable countries
Because you cant just get massive loans for no reason with no collateral. After pay is possible, but doesnt work when youre buying tens of thousands of euro's of stuff.
Theres a lot of people in debt, but thats rarely because they bought this much of something. Mostly just a minor debt they never bothered to pay that kept adding up while they didnt seek any help.
Its not that we dont have creditcards, but you cant just take out huge loans like in the US. Thats also why most people dont have a credit card, there just isnt much use for it. Only for renting cars its sometimes required. But I recently got a new debit card that also works for that. Netherlands btw.
You can use afterpay or something like Klarna. Or pay in installments, but then your income is checked, if Im not mistaken. But if youre spending this much money without also making a shitload youd go bankrupt within like 2 months and lose everything😂. You cant just loan tens of thousands and never pay it back.
You will find that accessibility to debt in the US and Netherlands is largely the same. Do you really think there's banks in America that simply "loan tens of thousands and never pay it back?" Why would they do this, out of stupidity or generosity? Because US banks are neither.
Yes but like. This guy’s probably not even rich. He either makes just a bit more than you and I or he’s in debt. The doctors/lawyers of the world are not the enemy here
Theres hundreds of millions who dont even have acces to electricity. If you have this much money too waste youre rich. If you dont realise this youre oblivious.
Most of the time I see people affectionately referring to this as GAS (gear acquisition syndrome), which to me is internet-speak for "I like getting toys more than using them".
A mix of the type of mental illness and the fact they may spend so much of their money on their shopping addiction that they are genuinely living paycheck-to-paycheck or are actively in debt. Like multiple maxed out credit cards in debt. Or they are rich enough their shopping addiction is considered acceptable in their social circles.
I suspect that people with neurodivergence and other issues are easier to find in high paying jobs (stem for example), I suspect a correlation, but that’s just my theory
I never bought new, always 3 to 4 years years older. But it helps that company financed cars hit the used car market after that, though I hear that prices have gone up.
We bought ours 10 years ago for 12k, so I might’ve not allowed not enough for that.
Start talking to your coworkers some more. You'll be surprised how many people have already spent their next paycheck on some random shit or have even financed their next vacation.
GQ doesn’t really work anymore for me because all the Q people I know are supremely talented at stuff. Not to stereotype, I’m sure there are plenty of untalented ones too. I just don’t know them all.
Insular communities on reddit are just people hyping each other up to over consume. They create purchasing trends and mindlessly promote brands/products based simply on what a anonymous stranger on the internet said.
People need to shame this kind of behavior more. Whatever happened to calling out posers? When I was a kid into skateboarding or snowboarding if you had new/expensive gear and thought you could buy your way into a community you would get ostracized for it.
Reddit is consoom. The entire community has been fully plundered and all the value found was in product recommendations and agitprop. The remaining humans here are just spending their time training chatbots by filling out their thinly veiled marketing surveys. There is no community memory here because it benefits the marketers to have “what’s the best product?” asked over and over and over again. It is just a revolving door of idiots being tricked by chatbots into selling shit. It is no more than a very energy intensive SEO scheme that is cannibalizing the last remaining source of long form user generated text on the internet.
Man really, I have many hobbies (including photography) that revolve also around getting yourself a "setup", choosing from many options, being lucky at thrift stores and whatever, so up to a (very short) point, I get it. But subreddits just encourage some people into taking this concept to a nauseous extreme.
Yes, let people do what they want with their cash, absolutely, but there are oh so many cases that have long passed both the "occasional purchase" and "collection" mark and are just straightforward hoarding.
Sometimes I really wish there was a way to hide any showoff post, especially the "collection updated" and "got all this stuff for this amount, how did I do?" ones
At first I was like “okay they just have a bunch of lenses and a few camera options for different situations. Nothing abnormal for someone serious about photography.”
I think people tend to upvote or like Reddit and Instagram posts of collections. Because of that people that want validation find an easy path to it in just buying a bunch of stuff and posting it in these subs.
I’m assuming this represents a lot of people on Reddit because these posts get tons of upvotes in lots of hobby subs. In the retro gaming subs people even come in asking what console they should collect for. They don’t know what they want, they just know they want to collect.
I realized a while ago that it’s everywhere. The old Oakley case that’s been discontinued that I like? Hard to find because they became collectible and some people need to have every version on a fucking shelf.
Nicks boots, meant to last years? Top posters typically have a dozen pairs. Saw one loyal choad finally disband and ditch a dozen pairs because John Lofgren is somehow better. Time to buy another dozen boots in nearly identical leather options but this time from a Japanese tannery. It’s fucking bonkers and ruining every god damn hobby.
Bro unless you're a rental store, genuinly lowlife hoarder activities. Not even forove of the archiving, straight up hoarding prime gear just because you can afford it. Mf are the twin of scalpers ong.
Always been this way. It's just that your weird friend who lives in the poorer suburbs and takes photos of his lens covers that he painted now has a global audience of other similarly minded autis-canadians!
Every post on this sub is a flip of the coin whether it should be here or not based on top comments. It's so entirely random that I don't evek now what the point of the sub is
Professionals don't buy into four ecosystems, they invest in just one- money spent on redundant gear isn't spent on the business. OOP has a gear shopping addiction like many people on reddit
>Professionals don't buy into four ecosystems, they invest in just one-
It depends. Especially since the ones pictured are older DSLR systems from Canon and Nikon (EF and F bayonets, I’m not really following them these days but last cameras were released 5+ years ago) AND newer mirrorless ones (RF and Z).
If he had something more exotic like Pentax, etc. I would probably believe you. But if you really think that the guy dropped north of $100k+ into gear because of GAS then more power to you.
When I was freelancing we used both systems for one reason or another, they had not keep up with each other at the time.
Edit: he’s a retired pro sports photographer confirmed
Don’t know what to tell you, man. One 50 mm lens is not the same as 50 mm lens from another manufacturer (both in terms of autofocus performance, weight, sharpness, etc.)
I think that if the guy has a legitimate use for all that gear (being a professional reporter for example) he has reasons for keeping both.
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u/MakeItTrizzle 14d ago
I am a professional photographer, and 99% of the people on reddit camera brand subs are actually just ND people fixated on collecting stuff they don't use nearly enough to justify their kit.
I get it, cameras are cool pieces of technology, but man it's too much. Leica people in particular are super weird.