One of the first thing that bites you if you're into photography is what subject to photograph? Do you just take pictures of the same ole' flowers, monuments or do you try to be different. The problem with trying to being different is finding out all those things which haven't been captured before. So, you hunt for those places/things (either mentally or physically) and then give up and in the end take the pictures of the same subjects which have been taken umpteen times before (butterfly on a flower, a flower petal, sunsets etc). You still believe that at least your photographs offer something different, maybe, a new perspective, a new *vision* (basically, all the things that you try to convince yourself with). Then, you get into some equipment acquisition syndrome and dream of owning the best in the class (read the most expensive); Zeiss & Leica lenses, Nikon D3X, Hasselblad: if something is so freaking expensive it gotta be good, right?
I am one of the 3 people in my country (the other two haven't been vociferous about it yet) who owns a 4/3rds system (a Olympus e-510), and honestly apart from a tiny-winy viewfinder; I haven't had too much to complain about the camera (I generally take all the blame for out of focus, horrifically shaky pics). Quite a few people have asked me why I invested into a 4/3rds system; well; just like my any other investment it wasn't something that I carefully thought about but was just an impulsive buy (I didn't even try it or any other brand before buying). It's a funny thing that I always believed I don't need a dSLR and was happy with my P&S (a Canon A95) till I decided to go for a trip to Corbett National Park where I had an opportunity to capture a tiger in the wild for the first time and boy, did I manage to capture it with a 3x optical zoom of Canon! I think sometimes you just need a better equipment to bail yourself out. Anyway, has the dSLR made me a better photographer than before? No, definitely not but it does allow me to experiment a bit more and push my own creative limits…it reminds me of a saying that I read long ago:
The difference between a picture and painting is that
a picture is a frozen captured moment of true life,
whereas a painting can be anything imagined in your mind.
..... someday, all these paintings will become pictures.