Modern cameras are now so capable that a beginner can pick up a flagship mirrorless body, leave a lot of it on automatic and come back with photographs that are sharp, correctly exposed and technically impressive. Autofocus finds the subject and follows it around the frame, Auto ISO keeps the exposure sensible, and 30 or 40 frames a second gives several chances at a moment that may exist for only a fraction of a second. Afterwards, Lightroom, Photoshop and increasingly AI can remove noise, rescue exposure, sharpen detail and get rid of things we wish hadn’t been there.

I’m not nostalgic for a return to manual-focus film cameras. I use all of that technology myself. But it does leave me with a question. If the camera can now do so much of the technical work, what actually makes someone a good photographer?

I know from my own beginnings that a good camera can flatter you. When I became serious about photography I bought a Canon R8, fitted a relatively inexpensive 50mm lens and started shooting. The R8 was a far better camera than I was a photographer. Its autofocus was excellent, Auto ISO kept me out of trouble and I could make sharp, well-exposed photographs almost immediately. At the time I thought quite a few of them were good.

“The mistake isn’t making contact. It’s asking for trust before you’ve earned familiarity.”

“You’ve got nothing to lose.”

It’s probably one of the most common pieces of advice given to photographers trying to break into the industry. Thinking about approaching a magazine? You’ve got nothing to lose. Thinking about approaching a manufacturer? Send the email. Thinking about applying for media accreditation? Just do it. The worst they can say is no.

It’s well-meaning advice and, in many ways, it’s true. Opportunities rarely arrive uninvited, and sooner or later everyone has to make the first move.

Before getting into cameras, lenses, memory cards, filters, editing apps, or what you should and shouldn’t be buying, it’s worth stepping back and understanding something most beginners get wrong almost immediately.

At the beginning, the camera is almost never the problem.

That sounds blunt, but it needs saying. Photography looks simple from the outside. You point a camera at something interesting, press the shutter, and get an image. So it feels logical that better photographs must come from better equipment. Spend any time online and that idea is reinforced constantly. Camera bodies, lenses, upgrades, settings, full frame, crop sensors, mirrorless, megapixels. The conversation always seems to come back to gear.

F1 the movie review