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Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

A more expensive camera will get you a bigger sweet spot in order for you to take more pictures in different light conditions, but it's like tennis rackets with a bigger sweet spot, it's allows beginners to pretend they actually know what they're doing.

What's wrong with that? If a person's goal is to get nice-looking photos of moments that are important to them, what's wrong with using a camera with a bigger sweet spot? If it means spending less time fiddling with the camera to get all the settings just right, that's more time spent actually participating in life instead of behind a camera.

Why does everyone taking photos have to be expressing themselves artistically? What's wrong with people who just want to capture a moment where someone they love has a sparkle in their eye?

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> Why does everyone taking photos have to be expressing themselves artistically? What's wrong with people who just want to capture a moment where someone they love has a sparkle in their eye?

This is a brilliant reason to use a camera. Almost any camera is good enough for this; using a prosumer DSLR will usually be a hinderance (they're big and bulky and have many buttons and switches and levers) and using a little digital compact is cheaper and easier.

A little digital compact is not able to shoot at ISO 3200 with low noise, so you'll end up using flash for indoor shooting which ruins the mood. It will not be able to shoot at 5 FPS, which is the only way (in my experience) to consistently get candid shots with magical looks on people's faces instead of closed eyes or momentary grimaces. And it won't be able to shoot with a narrow depth of field, which makes portraits way more beautiful.

If you take a nice DSLR, put it on aperture-priority with the lens all the way open at high ISO, turn the flash off, and shoot at 5 FPS while interesting things are happening to people (preferably from a bit of a distance so things are more candid), you'll get shots that people beg you for copies of. When I do this at weddings, I've have two different couples (friends/family) tell me that they liked my pictures better than the pro who they hired, and I'm not really that talented.

In your first paragraph, you're assuming that there are predetermined rules for what a good photo represents. You even mention a mysterious "mood."

In the second, you hit the nail on the head. The only thing that truly matters is whether the photographer likes their own photos, and if the people important to him like their photos.

If this doesn't happen, in the first case, they will seek to improve their images, and will naturally come by the same information that you and me consider defines "good" photos.

In the second, they may either care that others dislike their images (in which case, see above), or they may disregard their opinions and keep taking the same quality of photos (which we may subjectively judge as "good" or "bad," among other nuances).

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