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Comment by dylan604

14 hours ago

There's a saying "buy the glass, rent the camera" as camera bodies change much more frequently than lenses. There's more camera mounts now than when I first heard the saying though.

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dylan604

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Gigachad  14 hours ago

I think you've mixed that one up, its usually something like "date the body, marry the glass", implying you'll buy and sell many camera bodies over time but keep good lenses. For non professional work you'd want to own both the body and lens, going to the rental shop every time you go on holiday or to a birthday party would be a pain.

For professional work you rent both the lens and the body so you can use the highest end gear specialized for the one particular job and aren't left hanging on to a $10k lens you use once a year.

  • dylan604  13 hours ago

    > "date the body, marry the glass"

    how is that different? They both mean that you won't be keeping the camera while holding onto the lenses. Also, at the time of the saying, it was for professional film shoots and not your take on vacay. Yes, it's an old saying, but rang true for a long time. Similar to Moore's law. Neither are as relevant while still being a bit truthy.

    • Gigachad  13 hours ago

      You don't rent the camera body any more than you rent the lens. If you are a hobbiest or doing a job that doesn't require a huge range of gear you should own both.

      The saying is more that camera bodies get updated far more often than glass so you should care more about having great glass and swap out the camera bodies as needed. But owning lenses but no camera body would be absurd.

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porphyra  14 hours ago

The saying is a little outdated, or at least it needs more nuance rather than being a hard rule.

Nowadays lenses are improving in image quality significantly, particularly in the suppression of chromatic aberrations, and sharpness across the frame in zooms and wide angle lenses. Cheap mirrorless lenses put legendary L glass to shame nowadays. A bunch of Chinese manufacturers have autofocus lenses with amazing image quality. However, the bodies are sort of plateauing with 24 MP sensors still being popular for many years.

  • Gigachad  14 hours ago

    Video specs and autofocus have been the major improvements in camera bodies lately. I upgraded to an A7Cii and was impressed that the AF will perfectly lock on to fursuit eyes, while my A7iii would focus on the tip of the nose.