Photographers are becoming tech geeks instead of artists

I've read an excellent comment on one of the YouTube videos about the Nikon Df, a camera that the online hobbyist community proclaimed as controversial. Mario P. Menard, a professional photographer of over 30 years, has a different opinion than the reviewer, and it really made me think. Let us check his comment first.

I have a question for the author of this video. You stated that the Nikon DF is probably not a camera for professionals and more like a "gadget" camera. In the same video you also praise the image quality that comes out of the DF and you go to great length about it too. So why do you conclude the Nikon DF is not a camera for professionals?

I am a professional photographer who's been earning a full time living with photography for more than 30 years. To me a professional DSLR camera isn't about the type of features it's loaded with - To me it's all about image quality! As long as I can control shutter speed and aperture, nothing else really matters. Back in the film days I was shooting mostly medium format bodies. We didn't have a fraction of the features in our cameras we find in modern DSLR's today. The camera was simply a tool we used to record the light we finessed in our studios with the help of our strobes, reflectors, grids etc. Aside from lighting the most important tool for me was the quality glass I had mounted on my Hasselblad. The camera body only controlled the shutter speed and advanced the roll of film. That is all I cared about. That is pretty much what pro photographers cared about back in those days.

I do own a Nikon DF. I also own a Nikon D800 and a D3s. I have also owned a D100, D200, D300, D700 and a Fujifilm S5Pro. Of all the DSLR's I have owned the Nikon DF is my favourite. It's my favourite not because of the electronic features it has but because of the superb image quality the sensor produces. I also like the fact it lacks certain irrelevant features. In fact if Nikon were to introduce a totally manual DSLR with very little features I would probably be the first to buy one as long as it had a sensor as good or better than the one found in the DF.

There is way too much emphasis put on electronic features in cameras nowadays. Photographers are becoming tech geeks instead of artists. They barely learn the full capabilities of their camera and they're already talking about the next version they will buy.

There are two realities when it comes to photography gear these days: The pros, who have very little time to spend watching Youtube photography channels, and the hobbyists, who obsess about specs and features all day long instead of taking photos. That's partly fault of the success of influencers like Tony Northrup and Ken Wheeler, two "spec sheet photographers" who have absolutely no photography skills, and judge cameras based on how many electronic features it has, yet they have nothing to show in terms of the art of photography besides mediocre snapshots of horses and flowers.