Only a very small percentage of the modern silicon and glass mass is bought by artists or professionals. People who produce the mass of 'content' visible on various photo and equipment sites are like me, people with a daytime job and time and money to spare. The market is always right in the modern world. The market says that new is good or at least better than old whether we talk about cars or cameras or other electronics. Wines and vintage stuff are an exception but they are for the rich snobs. Collectors, moneymen and the like.
I do not envy people who are making their daily bread & butter doing photography. Nowadays everybody who counts is an art director and a designer or producing 'content' on the Net. Those who get clicks get ad money and they survive. Those who click are not more qualified than anybody else. They like fast food and American TV-series. They listen to commercial radio channels and buy their essentially identical clothes from 'outlets' or Net stores. Money cattle, horses.
Quality has become a scarce commodity that is reserved for connoisseurs with money and to those who can create it themselves.
An illusion of having the capability to be able to create quality can be bought. That's why most people buy their Leicas and Nikons and their fluorite glass, vests, harnesses and Billingham bags. You carry quality around your neck with the belief that it is contagious.
Quality can be taught and learned. Artistry cannot, which is very unfair and against the egalitarian ideals of the modern society.
Which brings us to the 'why' of the hamster wheel hystery of luxury gadget consumerism. Creativity is grossly overestimated in our popular culture. This is because whe are shown people who have risen from nobodies to Vevo and MTV, Pirelli and Elle and what have you, who make millions and fly their private jets from one of their private island to another.
People want to emulate creativity. Some decades ago everybody wanted to be a journalist or a secret agent. Now kids play war games, racing pilots and guitar heroes...other superheroes as well. My generation (I am 63 soon) grew up in a world where photographers were superheroes (at least to some of us) and somehow this has stuck. Of course most of us had economical realities pointing us towards something that would create steady income with our particular set of abilities of which graphic arts often were not the most notable.
The dreams never died. "What could I achieve if I had a Real Camera with a big lense and a thorough user's manual"...
We are basically the reason why there are prosumer cameras with enough pixels to print high quality murals and lenses to match them.
Would the artists or the sports and the fashion guys ever had created enough cash flow to finance the deluge of optoelectronics that floods the marketplace today? Not likely, but the masses could.
And that's how we are here.
Sorry, a rant. I am stuck at work and there is very little to do. Potato.
