An excellent post, Glen. I don't disagree with anything you've
written. I guess a point that I was driving toward in the few posts
I've made on this thread over the last day or two, is that the term
"pro" or "professional" when referring to cameras, is virtually
meaningless, due to the wide variety of professional photographers out
there.
You are, of course, correct, insofar as when one says "pro camera", a
certain image comes to mind.
I guess one of the points I was leading towards (if, indeed there was
one!), is that the word "pro" has been usurped by the marketing
departments, and now seems to mean "a camera that amateurs (ie:
non-pros) will be impressed with, or possibly impress others with).
regards,
frank
"D. Glenn Arthur Jr." wrote:
> Seems to me we're starting to mix up a couple of things.
>
> "A professional's camera" is a camera used by a professional.
> It can be anything that _some_ pro finds useful. (And then
> the question is "professional _what_?" I know a biologist
> who uses a camera to document plant diseases as part of her
> work. She is using a camera professionally, as a tool with
> which she earns her living, but "photographer" is not her
> profession. Some of her requirements, however, match those
> of professional photographers.)
>
> "A professional camera" has different nuances. It refers to
> a camera people _expect_ a significant number of pros to find
> useful. And on that basis, it really has at least two meanings:
>
> A camera that one feels meets certain criteria
> for "suitability for professional use" (subjective)
>
> A camera that the manufacturer has designed (or has
> designed a marketing plan for) to attempt to fit the
> requirements of some segment of the professional
> market (arbitrary)
>
> Related to the second, we also have:
>
> A camera that the manufacturer has decided to label
> "pro" to increase its cachet (arbitrary)
>
> So we have one subjective meaning, one arbitrary meaning, and
> the closest we get to an objective standard is a closely
> related (not the same) concept with _fuzzy_boundaries_.
>
> Folks, we're _not_ going to nail this one down, and it's
> because of _language_ reasons! First, we're not all even
> talking about the same thing, and second, what we're talking
> about is not objective.
>
> Yes, we can try to pin down "suitability for professional use",
> but we quickly get into "what kind of professional" (Polaroids
> for passport photos, driver's licenses, event badges, etc., are
> clearly _commercial_ cameras, some of which have far less use
> outside of a commercial setting than any of the "pro" cameras
> discussed so far -- do they count? What about the whole "wedding
> versus photojournalist versus portrait versus fine-art versus
> product photographer" thing? Different needs for different kinds
> of professional photographer!). There are certain requirements
> we might be able to agree on, such as "reliability" (but even
> there we have the question, "How reliable (and by what measure)
> does it have to be to count?"), but that alone doesn't seem to
> fit most folks fuzzy notion of what it means to be a "professional
> camera". For every requirement we nail down (and most of _those_
> will have a "with some exceptions" caveat attached), there will
> be several that are either completely subjective (what's a hard
> requirement and what's merely a desirable feature?) or don't
> apply to all types of professional photographer.
>
> Oh, we can talk about this, especially if you're having fun
> talking about it. Some of us may even get some useful insights
> out of the discussion. But we're never going to finish talking
> about it by figuring it all out and convincing each other that
> we, as a group, now know what a "professional camera" is.
>
> One thing I find rather telling is the fact that all the cameras
> I've seen discussed so far have been ones that are equally suited
> to hobbyist use. The "pro cameras" _we're_ interested in, whether
> we're pros or not, seem to be the ones that hobbyists are also
> interested in. Not the four-photos-on-one-sheet Polaroids, nor
> the large-format-permanently-attached-to-a-copy-stand machines,
> nor arial survailance cameras ... all of which are more obviously
> *professional* cameras not because they meet arbitrary or subjective
> criteria for what a professional camera _should_ be, but simply
> because they have so little use outside of a professional setting!
> _Those_ are obviously professional cameras as much because of what
> they're _not_ (i.e. hobbyist cameras) as because of what they are.
> (That is, they're not professional cameras because they're not
> hobbyist cameras; rather, their being professional cameras is
> _obvious_ because they're not hobbyist cameras.)
>
> -- Glenn
>
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