Reply To: you're not a real photographer because your camera is too small/ not full frame

[fstopper89]

All interesting arguments here.

I do know a few pros who produce awesome work and they are using crop bodies. Yes, these are few and far between… but it’s obviously working for them. I would agree that if I were attending a wedding and saw the photographer using an entry-level body and kit lenses that I would seriously question their ability. My friend’s cousin got married last summer and they couldn’t afford her to shoot their wedding (she did their engagements though, and she’s a really good wedding photographer) and she said the photographer at the wedding was shooting with a 5D Mark II but seemed to be posing everyone awkwardly and she was doubting his skills. Sure enough, her cousin shared the gallery password to friends and family and the entire album of like 500 photos is just awful. Poor lighting, blah depth of field, horrible posing, and it’s like he managed to catch the worst possible expressions in the candids. And that all came from a nice full-frame camera. His skills as a photographer were seemingly nonexistent.

The supposed best digital cameras out there now are the medium format and large format cameras like the Hasselblad. Heck I could never afford that as a system, unless I took out a mortgage-size loan. But does it make me a faux because I’m not using the best camera available? No, for one in many cases that kind of camera is probably overkill anyway, but I can produce sharp, well-exposed photos that can be printed extremely large for my clients with the equipment I do have.