Quality of photographic equipment

Good equipment means you need to work less

If you leave all the technical details aside, that is what it is. Better equipment lets you take the picture you want with less effort.

Measurable vs Meaningful Quality

You will read many reviews that will present you numbers and have pixel for pixel comparisons. Based on these they will be able to measurably show that one set of equipment is better than something else. They will be right. However most of those numbers and comparisons will not mean that much. It is not about having the perfect equipment, it is more understanding your equipment, knowing its advantages and limitations.

A good example is Falloff. It basically means that for larger apertures the lens is not able to get enough light to the corner of the frame, they appear darker. It is a flaw and you can compare two lenses (at same aperture) and say one is better than the other one. But then again, is it a big problem?

You see falloff more when you shoot against a uniform and light colored background, not every picture you take will make this visible
Falloff is a problem with large aperture, reduce the aperture it will disappear. Note that, for lighter backgrounds you will need to have light where you do usually do not need a larger aperture.
Falloff is a deterministic problem, you can easily correct it. If you know that the brightness of your pixels around the corners of the frame are less you can compensate for it. Most cameras have a falloff correction, and you can easily create a mask for your editor to compensate for this.

If you know what the problem is, you can always force shots where this flaw makes itself known, but question is how much do you really suffer from this quality. The falloff is an excellent example, basically if you know what it is and how much it affects your pictures under what circumstances, you can manage it quite easily. It also depends on what you want to do, you might actually take a lot of pictures against light backgrounds with as high an aperture as you can get, and for you a lens with less falloff may actually be more meaningful than most others. Point is just because you can measure a quality, does not mean that it is that important for your work.

Here is another example, the sharpness test page where I compare the performance of four lenses. But the real test is, which lens I would pick if I'm going for a trip and want to get good pictures. Instead of relying on artificial tests, the important thing is to see which lens makes it easier for you to get the pictures you want.

What is bad equipment?

It is probably easier to explain what is bad equipment, to understand which qualities you should actually care about more in your equipment. I will use some examples to make a point, but in none of these examples do I want to make a statement that equipment A is better than equipment B. They are just used as examples, but I realized using actual names makes the discussion easier to follow.

Equipment you do not carry

The most important quality for your equipment is presence. If you are not carrying it with you when you need it, even the best equipment is not useful. In my personal experience, these are the general reasons:

Weight: This is a bit beyond the actual weight in grams, it is whether or not you are interested in carrying that weight for whatever you expect out of that equipment. This is actually quite subjective, what I am willing to carry around with me is not the same as someone else. Here is an example, I am going to a half day hiking trip where I expect to take pictures of some animals, and I need to decide between a Nikon 70-300 and a Nikon 200-500. Some will say, doubling the weight of the equipment (lens + camera) is OK for the 200mm of extra focal length, others could say, I can sacrifice a bit the longer end, let me carry less.

Additional value to your day: There are overlaps between what photographic equipment do for you. Let's just take an example, and say for some reason we already are carrying a Nikon 24-70 with us on a trip. Does it make sense to also take, for example, a Nikon 50 with us? In this case, the Nikon 50 is a small light lens, so there is little to say about the weight argument, it is just that if we already have a lens that is quite good covering the focal length carrying an extra lens that does the same is probably not helping that much (the argument could be made the other way around as well).

Equipment with technical qualities you do not like : If we are amateur photographers, our goal is to enjoy photography. And face it if something bothers you with the equipment, it will keep bothering you during the day, and you will think I knew that this equipment (is slow, heavy, not sharp, has too much distortion). Whether or not the technical blemishes are real or perceived does not really matter at this point, it is your personal opinion that matters. If you think lens A is not sharp, well guess what every time you make a picture you will be thinking, if only I had a sharp lens I could have done better. This is why that equipment will stay at home on your next trip.

Special equipment: There are some equipment they are nice to have, but rarely get used as they are only fit for one purpose. Very wide angle lenses, very long zooms are examples.

Equipment that makes you work more

For me the main quality is how much effort takes to take a good picture with some equipment. If every shot you take is golden, you are using perfect equipment or you have learned to use what you have really well. If you need to take say twenty shots to get one good one, either the equipment is not helping you much or you have still more to learn.

Part of this also relates to what you want to do. If you are making shots in a studio, whether or not you use autofocus may not be such a big deal. However if you are running after a hyperactive pet or kid, you may think differently.

This is also a double edged sword actually. If you can learn to deal with bad equipment, you will have a much easier life with better equipment. So there is a point of using bad equipment after all, it is a good (but sometimes frustrating) learning experience.

Equipment with defects

This is not equipment with flaws, but real defects and limitations that stop you from making a technically good picture. A good example is a lens with a broken autofocus, where it sometimes works and sometimes has problems. Sure you can work around most flaws (use only manual focus for example), but if the equipment is not doing what it is supposed to, it is holding you back. Coming back to the example, while it is possible to use a lens with a broken auto focus system in manual focus mode, lenses that are designed for autofocus do not have the ease of adjusting the focus as a lens that was designed for manual focus.

These pages are for Amateur Photographers and not really for seasoned photographers and professionals. I have no affiliation or commercial interest with any brand/make. I write from my own experience. I ended up using mainly Nikon, so I am more familiar with this brand than others. See price for notes on pricing as well as photography related links.