Photography, like life, seems to attract them. You know the ones…you tell them you just bought a digital-camera (insert brand name and model here) and they proclaim:”My Brother-in-law (or whomever) just bought a (insert brand name and model here) and he said it’s the best camera ever. Much better than the one you just got!” “Why you can’t even take a good picture with that set up!”

I call them the “No it Alls”.

Never mind that most of the pictures they’ve ever taken have been blurry or have their fingers in the frame. Never mind that they don’t even own a camera. They’ve read magazines, they’ve surfed the ‘net (ad nauseum), they’ve SEEN pictures, goldarnit, and they KNOW photography.

Why, they know that the Zicor-Hexatakumar is the finest lens ever. They know it’s as sharp as they’ll ever get optics and it has a fine Bokay (Bokay? Why would you want a lens that is like a bunch of flowers?)!

Why…your puny little SIGMA-TOKINA-TAMRON whatever will never take a good picture, they have it on good authority (I AM the Au-tho-ri-ty!!) by the grumpiest reviewers on the internet that no lens that doesn’t force you to sell your house is any good!

If the reviewer is grumpy, he has to be good, because grumpy self-righteousness is the sign of a good reviewer…nothing pleases him or her. (especially if they live in San Diego…but I’ll save that for another time).

DON’T listen to them, they’re just scared little gnomes trying to protect their ever shrinking domains. The dawn of a new era is here and it’s called digital-photography.

They’ll tell you you have to have THIS lens, and THIS body and of course THIS tripod and THIS camera bag or you’ll never take a good picture.

All you hear from them is “NO, no, no” No that lens won’t work. No that tripod won’t work. No.

These same people will proclaim “the resolution race is over…you don’t need any more than (4,5,6, 8, or 10)-megapixels!” “I have that on good authority!” Of course, these are the same people who proclaimed, a short while ago, you don’t need a hard-drive bigger than 20-megabytes, or you absolutely don’t need a computer faster than 133 mHz.

Just because that’s where their vision ends, doesn’t mean it’s true.

Assuming a positive , good progression of image-quality (not noisier images and stuff like that), like the improvements in film from the “old days” (remember the graininess of Tri-X, Ektachrome, or any of the original high-speed films?), improvements in resolution and noise-reduction will be a great thing.

Do you NEED more tha X-Megapixels? Well, maybe you don’t, but when someone can take a picture of a forest with an APS-sized sensor, and make out the birds in the bird’s nest of a single-tree in that picture, they’ll be happy with the increase in detail that increase in resolution brings.

In reality what you have to have (besides a camera) is the DESIRE to take a good picture. Digital photography can fuel that desire like never before in history! Read as much as you can, share as much as you can, but, most importantly SHOOT as much as you can.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a Ziess DistagonSummimicron, get out there and shoot (John). You’ll learn more from your bad shots (why did this happen, why is it over/under exposed….why is it blurry?) than you will from your good shots (O.K.,… came out good….on to the next shot). The more bad-shots you take, the more introspection and learning will happen, and pretty soon, the introspection will shrink to a minimum, and you’re flying.

You don’t even have to show your bad stuff to anybody (not even Kodak) because you can do all of this in the privacy of your own home…but you’ll learn faster if you share (both good and, more importantly, bad) with people who share your passion for photography (as opposed to equipment).

Have you seen a lot of the photo-contests lately? Notice anything about the equipment they’re using? Lots and lots of top place finishers are using consumer level cameras, even point-and-shoots, to win these contests.

This alone should tell you something. Unlike the No-it-alls theory that only a good camera can produce a good photo, the reality is, only a good PHOTOGRAPHER can produce a good photo.

Get out there a shoot.

By-the-by, today’s bee pictures were taken with my Nikon D200, 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor lens because that’s what I happen to own. Rest assured, however, that I’d still be in my backyard shooting the birds and the bees with my old Pentax H3 and Vivitar lens if that was what I had.