Here’s a good question for the budding photographer and the experienced photographer alike: “What is gear lust?”  It’s something that we all eventually have to deal with inside ourselves.  It’s good to know what it is and when we’re experiencing it.  So, here’s what gear lust is.

Definition of Gear Lust

Gear lust can be easily defined as a strong (even overwhelming) desire for new and better camera gear.  There might be a reason behind you wanting new equipment but, most of the time, it’s just you wanting new stuff.  Oftentimes, this is driven by you dreaming of what kinds of photos you can create with newer and better equipment.

Symptoms of Gear Lust

Gear lust can see you spending hours online checking reviews.  You carefully and meticulously plan out what equipment you would get if you could.  You will have a detailed list (or several lists) of specific camera bodies, lenses, flash units, tripods/monopods, soft boxes, camera bags, filters, backdrops, flash brackets, and much much more.  The list of camera equipment you plan for is rather extensive.  Call it a dream setup or similar.

A key symptom of gear lust is that, when you hear of a new piece of photography equipment (even newly coming onto the market), you immediately start researching it and planning for how it will fit into your current equipment plans.

You put so much time and effort into your dream list that you might easily be considered a well-researched expert in the various kinds of camera equipment available on the market.  Researching out camera equipment might become more of a hobby to you than actually photography is.  This new hobby can be temporary or more long term depending upon the degree of lust vs. self control which you exercise.

One other key but latent symptom of gear lust is paralysis.  This paralysis manifests in 2 different ways.  The first happens when you’ve built your list but fail to move beyond the planning stage.  While you’ve certainly done your homework when it comes to researching out and choosing camera gear, you run into paralysis when it comes to acquiring the gear off your list(s).

Many photographers suffering from gear lust never move beyond the stage of planning into acquisition.  Oftentimes, these photographers are dreaming while on a limited budget.

For those who do move beyond planning (and yes there are those who do move beyond planning), oftentimes, acquisition is about where it ends.  You’ll try something out in the field a time or two and then have no use for it in the future.  Many a nice piece of camera equipment starts gathering dust as the photographer doesn’t actually need it for his/her photography.  Photographers in this category often don’t have as limited a budget to work with as the first group do.

How to Tell Need vs. Lust

Naturally, after learning about gear lust and how it manifests, the next question is how do you tell whether or not you’re experiencing gear lust or genuine need for equipment upgrades.  In order to answer this question, you will have to sit down and be honest with yourself.  Ask yourself questions like these and be brutally honest.

• Have I reached the limits of what my current equipment will let me do with photography?  Or, have I found a hard line which I want to cross but my current equipment won’t let me cross?
• Have I done research into and practiced techniques to make my current equipment do the job?
• Am I getting disappointed, aggravated, frustrated, etc. when the photos I planned to take are not the ones which come out of my camera?
• Will this new gear work with the photography I’m ACTUALLY taking?  Have I found a new and sustained interest in another kind of photography which my current gear cannot accommodate?
• Do I REALLY need this equipment I’m looking at or do I just want it?

It can be really difficult to sit down and have an honest conversation with yourself like this.  However, if you’re strong enough to face yourself, then you can find out whether or not you actually need the new camera gear you’ve been ogling.  If not, you’ve simply got a case of gear lust.

My Experience with Gear Lust

When I was a newer photographer, I spent some time looking at different kinds of camera gear available on the market.  I hadn’t fully decided what kind of photography I was interested in.  Because of this, I found myself chasing down things which I, ultimately, would not need.

I started creating lists of things which I would eventually need to acquire as I thought I would be pursuing wedding or portrait photography.  When I discovered, over time, that I didn’t care for those kinds of photography, I dropped seeking out that kind of photography gear.  Some of the gear I had already acquired for weddings and portraits now collects dust.  I turned to landscape and nature photography gear instead.

It wasn’t until I read another article on gear lust that I figured out what was going on with me.  While I hadn’t let gear lust take over my life, it could be an easy distraction for me to fall into.  After that article, I decided that I would work with the gear I already had.  I stopped looking into my dream setup and started working on building my dream portfolio instead.

Lately, I have finally run into the limits of what my current camera gear can do for me.  As a landscape photographer, I’ve been taking photos of beautiful landscape scenes during the morning, day, and evening.  The natural extension was to start working on night landscape photography.  However, that’s where I started running into a problem.

With my current gear, I had only one lens which would let me take the kinds of landscape photos I wanted during the night.  This is my nifty 50 (50mm f/1.8 prime lens).  It’s a mid-range focal length lens and there’s nothing wrong with it.  It does its job very well.  However, thanks to it being a prime lens, I cannot zoom in or out depending upon my preferences for composition.  Oftentimes, I would miss out on the composition I truly wanted thanks to the restrictions of this lens (I often wanted a wider angle than 50mm will give me).

For the first time in years, I started researching out camera gear again.  I had a genuine need for something else and the only way to fill that need was with new equipment.  I’m branching out in my landscape photography.  So, this new lens was a logical expansion point for my current equipment given the photography which I actively pursue.

Conclusion

Gear lust is a common trap for photographers of all skill levels to fall into.  If you are not actively in the market for new equipment which will enhance your current photography efforts, it’s a waste of time.  It will leave you always feeling like you are lacking when you may not be.

Instead of designing your dream setup, you should be building your dream portfolio using what you have.  Many amazing portfolios were built with “substandard” equipment which lacked all the current whizz-bangs of today’s camera gear.  You can do it too.