(This is my thirtieth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)
Ewen Bell has released a video where he encourages his viewers to buy the camera they love.
He’s very adamant about it, to the point where he says it repeatedly throughout the video, but also he mentions that if you already love the camera you’re using, you don’t have to buy another.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a career photographer say that before, but here we are.
I started following Ewen Bell because where we have a similar knowledge base we tend to agree, but he has far more experience in several areas so I’m bound to learn something from watching.
For example: I learned there’s little chance I’ll be buying his favorite camera. A used model costs over $2,000 US, which is not something he brought up in the video. For a professional photographer, that’s still quite reasonable. For me, not so much.
As a digital media teacher I’m frequently asked what things should be purchased. Parents and students want to know what the “best” thing is, as if all electronic devices were organized in a line from best to worst. Instead, I hem and haw about types of cameras and what works well for which situation.
Buying what you love is a far easier metric than any objective standards that I’d be able to manage.
My students still understand this, to some degree. I’ve a bunch of cameras in my room, but the ones they gravitate towards aren’t the newest or most expensive. They’re the ones they enjoy the most. Some of that’s aesthetics, some of it’s ease of use, but all of their criteria are valid.
Unless they want to borrow one of the DSLRs that’s too old to do video in order to record video. Then they’re going to run into a problem or two.