About What Camera Gear
One Question. Every Photographer.
My name is Jerome D. I have been making photographs for 35 years.
Not professionally — I never made that leap. But seriously, in the way that people who started shooting on film in the late eighties tend to take it seriously. I learned in a darkroom. I made mistakes that cost me rolls of film I couldn't afford to reshoot. I developed my own prints and watched images emerge in the developer tray until the process felt like second nature.
Over those 35 years, I accumulated something alongside the photographs: an obsessive interest in the tools photographers choose and why they choose them. Not as gear acquisition for its own sake, but as a window into how great photographers think. The camera is never the point — but the choice of camera almost always reveals something.
That question — what does this photographer actually use, and why? — is harder to answer properly than it sounds. Information is scattered across old interviews, forum threads, manufacturer profiles, and monograph footnotes. Often contradictory. Often unverified. Always time-consuming to track down.
What Camera Gear exists to answer that question properly.
What You'll Find Here
The site now covers more than 175 photographers, from the founding figures of modern photojournalism to contemporary masters working today. Each profile includes:
- Verified gear: cameras, lenses, film stocks — sourced from interviews, manufacturer documentation, and first-hand accounts
- Style and technique: how they work, what distinguishes their vision, and what their equipment choices reveal about their practice
- How to shoot like them: practical guidance for photographers who want to study and apply their approach
- Post-processing tips: how to replicate their aesthetic in editing
- Books and legacy: the essential works and context for understanding their contribution to the medium
Our Editorial Standard
The most important rule on this site: we only reference gear we have positive evidence a photographer used.
Photography sites are full of confident-sounding equipment lists that turn out to be speculation or aggregated myth. We go back to primary sources — the photographer's own words in interviews, manufacturer documentation, published monographs, verified accounts from colleagues and editors. Where the evidence is ambiguous, we say so, or we leave it out entirely.
This is harder and slower than repeating what other sites say. It is also what makes the site worth reading — at least, that is the intention.
Why This Site Exists
I built What Camera Gear because I wanted it to exist and it didn't. After decades of photography and years of researching the gear behind images I admired, I kept finding the same shallow lists recycled across dozens of sites. No sourcing. No context. No analysis of why a photographer made a particular choice.
This site is my attempt to do it properly. Every profile is researched from primary sources. Every gear recommendation in our buying guides is grounded in what working photographers actually use.
If you find an error, a missing photographer, or have a primary source I haven't found — I want to hear from you. Use the contact form.
— Jerome D, editor