You pretty much nailed it there...
----- Original Message -----
From: "D. Glenn Arthur Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 2:38 PM
Subject: Professional: meta-discussion
> > > Gosh, I thought professional only meant, its your way
> > > of earning an income, I didn't realise it is so complicated!
>
> 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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