I tend to vacillate like a sine wave between camera equipment with very high resolution and lots and lots of controls, and gear that some might consider pedestrian or incapable of producing the good results under all circumstances. I bounced from a Nikon D810 to a super zoom camera. From a Sony A7Rii to a gaggle of pygmy-sensored Panasonic cameras. It's never a completely conscious decision but I think I've worked out what my motivation is for the changing systems.
I buy a high performance, do-everything camera and a bag full of choice lenses because I buy into the fear that most photographers experience. It comes from the idea that if your work isn't strong enough, or interesting enough, then maybe it's your gear that's holding you back. Bad, faulty logic but some of us are highly susceptible to it.
So I splash out hard cash to buy (or re-buy) whatever the best camera of the moment is and I start using it for everything. But the process becomes too routine and too easy. You can routinely fuck up and the camera will save you. You get sloppy. You get complacent. You know that if you just shoot raw with something like an A7Rii all you have to do it get stuff reasonable in focus and the rest you can fix after the fact. Did your boredom with the gear lead you to ignore technique and now you have overexposed frames? No problem, your miracle camera can pull down exposure at least a stop if you shot raw. Were you too busy oggling the models to read the exposure meter? Did you just default to auto because it's all so damn easy? No problem, you can push that underexposed frame up three stops, thanks to Sony sensors (Don't try this at home with Canon cameras....). And the bottom line is that aesthetically you begin to play to the camera's strengths. Everything is a showcase for dynamic range or infinite detail or ultra-bokeh-ism.
Eventually the cameras become boring and the certainty of knowing you are covered and can produce something that's at least acceptable to a client sucks the nervous energy, the fear of failure, out of the project and makes work just about the work. At some point I get depressed reading that we're all shooting with the alpha---omega of cameras and I crave some fear and some creative adrenaline and some challenge. And that's when the big purge kicks in. The other side of the sine wave.
I dump all the bourgeoise "safe" and "reliable" gear and start pressing cameras like the RX10iii into service. Or I grab a lens that's nearly as old as I am and put it on the front of a dinky frame camera and try, by sheer force of will, to make that combination make work that's as good as the stuff I can do blindfolded with the $3200 cameras. But more interesting in its imperfections. I think humans, in general, like challenges. If you are operating well above a subsistence/survival level I think you like to show that the art comes from you and not the camera. That your point of view is more important than the pedigree of your glass. That you don't need a crutch to make interesting or fun photographs.
That's when I grab the >$1,000 "do everything" compact camera and try to make it sing like a Hasselblad. Because --- if I can make good work with something small and cheap and non-professional it means that the idea worked or the style worked or, even, the point-of-view had value that outweighed the much more mundane idea of perfection.
When I'm on this side of the sine wave I generally feel that "perfect" cameras and "state of the art" cameras are for pussies. Until I come across a client with a hand full of purchase orders and a bunch of projects to do. Then the fear kicks back in and I succumb to my own insecurities and head out looking for the next perfect camera. Afraid to risk the promise of cash just to champion a Quixotic quest with lesser cameras. But in the back of my mind I know I'll be back at the edge of the envelope, down the road. A few months later. Maybe a year...
The same thing goes for the actual work. I'll be busy for weeks at a time, sitting in the studio post processing late into the night, shooting all day. And the more I work the more I wish I had time just to do my own art. But then, when work slows down or stops, I feel unmoored from my business connections. I convince myself I may never bring in another job. I start to fear the void. And then instead of doing my "art" I get busy marketing so I can hook the next tranche of paying work. Which makes me anxious to do my own work all over again....It's a different version of the vicious circle I described above. But it's the best observation I can self-apply in the moment. Go figure...
