If you have ever read a photography forum, you will know what today’s topic is all about.  And I imagine, it isn’t a condition restricted to photography. The people who are interested in the tools vs the people who are interested in the final output of said tool.

Let me say right here and now, I am probably somewhere in the middle, and oddly enough, I think that is the best place to be. Some days I might lean towards the group favouring the output, not the tools used. That is probably where my frustration with the gear heads starts to raise it’s ugly head. Does this sound familiar?

I think the new NorbTech 123XYZ Camera looks like crap. And the mount wont take the Monkey mount lenses I have already got. And what is the go with that crappy Acme 2001 sensor? What where they thinking? And why doesn’t the lens have more zoom? And no primes in the line up is a huge mistake. And the rear LCD is not 3D. It doesn’t play MP3s. The GPS doesn’t work in tunnels. It only shoots at 24 FPS, in CROPPED mode!!! Forget this crap and get a BestBrand camera!!

And it goes on and on and on. Then a gearhead who favours EvenBetterBrand will tear the previous post apart, and explain why he is a fanboy of EvenBetterBrand cameras and why they are better than BestBrand and then why the new NorbTech 123XYZ is the biggest pile of poo ever to grace his monitor.

And then it goes on some more. More often than not, you don’t see many images from the gear heads. It seems they are so interested in what can and can’t be done by a camera, that they don’t have the time to actually use it. Even though they know the exact pixel density of every sensor made in history and can quote you the thickness of an AA filter on a sensor. They are nearly as passionate as the people on the other end of the spectrum, the artists!

These are the people that look for meaning in a snap shot. They try and convey emotion, feeling, love, angst, a sore toe and much more, in an iPhone photo. You just know an underexposed photo is supposed to be a brooding representation of the suppression of the artist. Really, its just a badly metered photo of a bloke doodling on a pad.  They can find all sorts of meanings and representations in all manor of photos. And they couldn’t give a bohemians cravat about what sort of camera was used, they really don’t care. It is all about the image.

So, where do you sit in the Gear Geek to Art Freak spectrum?