Is the Party Over for Gear Manufacturers?

You probably don't need me to tell you this but photography can be a fairly expensive habit endeavor. If you're making all or part of your living snapping pictures, the money you spend on gear is a cost of doing business. If you're pursuing photography as a hobby, and depending on how hard you've been bit, it can put a sizable dent in your discretionary funds: Real funds or imaginary funds... make that plastic funds, aka, your credit cards.

As the economy continues to go into the toilet, I wonder how many photo-hobbyists (i.e., those people who make up the largest group of photo-gear consumers) will continue spending at the rate they've been spending on the latest-and-greatest camera or strobe or editing software manufacturers continue releasing into the marketplace? Have we reached, or are we near reaching, a saturation point where people simply decide to make do with what they've already accumulated in their camera bags or installed on their computers?

Much the way many folks engage in frivolous spending practices when times are good, tough times usually result in more frugal purchasing decisions. If the news media is correct and the economic forecasts they continue dwelling on is on-the-money, a lot of people are going to think twice before they plunk down five-hundred or a thousand or a few thousand on whatever new dSLR camera body Canon or Nikon comes out with. (I'm talking, of course, about all those pro-capable cameras for the masses.)

Instead, I think many shooters, if they haven't already figured it out, are going to realize that making good pictures isn't so much about the gear that's used, it's mostly about how that gear is used. I know that kind of thinking flies in the face of the majority of the marketing and advertising these manufacturers throw at us, but that's a fact... Jack.

The eye-candy at the top is the Goddess of Glam, Tera Patrick, from about a year or so ago.