My wife and I rented a full-frame mirrorless from the local camera store some months ago because she wanted nice pictures of our first puppy. As it turns out, this experience went much like a take-home test drive for a luxury car. After a few days, we returned the camera to the rental desk then walked ten feet and bought an identical unit.
We paid $3500 for the privilege with no regrets (so far). I forgot pictures can look so good: high resolution, pleasing background blur, and most important it's just a camera. It doesn't have reddit, or HN, or email, or pinterest. It sits about the house where we can grab it quickly. It goes in the day pack on hikes. It blows every other webcam out of the water.
And it has smarts to compete with our current-gen iPhones, which we increasingly tuck away to combat distraction. Fast autofocus and face-recognition are lifesavers and often outperform the phones. It's like photography on easy mode. Which it should be considering the sticker price.
I get that the best camera is the one you have with you. But we carry our phones less and our camera more. It's silly and sad that we can't exercise more self-control. But from our privileged perspective, a dedicated camera was a great investment in our quality of life.
We paid $3500 for the privilege with no regrets (so far). I forgot pictures can look so good: high resolution, pleasing background blur, and most important it's just a camera. It doesn't have reddit, or HN, or email, or pinterest. It sits about the house where we can grab it quickly. It goes in the day pack on hikes. It blows every other webcam out of the water.
And it has smarts to compete with our current-gen iPhones, which we increasingly tuck away to combat distraction. Fast autofocus and face-recognition are lifesavers and often outperform the phones. It's like photography on easy mode. Which it should be considering the sticker price.
I get that the best camera is the one you have with you. But we carry our phones less and our camera more. It's silly and sad that we can't exercise more self-control. But from our privileged perspective, a dedicated camera was a great investment in our quality of life.