Tools Industrial Series
Sunday, September 4th, 2011
Tools Industrial Series 
Is “industrial strength” a more descriptive term than “professional?”?
It irritates me to no end when these professional kids want professional cameras to get professional quality professional pics to mount in a professional way. There’s no such thing as a professional power drill!
But there is a industrial strength power drill. It is a tool that is built to the specs required to perform a job day in and day out. They are not pretty but they make holes, as is the assumed use of a power drill.
So should we try to make it known that every brand’s one-series is a industrial strength camera, a tool prepared for the job?
LOL.
Actually there are professional grade tools as there are consumer grade tools.
The problem is that very few people take classes in photography anymore and most have no clue to the correct terms used to describe not only the equipment, but the techniques as well. Certain buzz words are used because maybe they sound cool.
There are many reasons for this. Concert and some sports venues do not allow camera that are capable of shooting professional quality images although are not actually cameras that can stand up to the hard use a professional photographer subjects their equipment on a daily basis. So when a venue considers the lowest cost dLSR “professional”, the uneducated and inexperienced have to assume that ALL dSLR’s are professional
The other trap is that while intelligent people would never expect to be able to buy a Fender Stratocaster® and join a band as the lead guitarist, think that by spending $5,000 on a dSLR will magically make them a photographer.
It is not unusual for a photographer to spend hundreds of hours in photo school and another 2000 or more hours working as an assistant photographer before they can take on assignments as a freelance photographer.
An example of a “professional” camera is the Nikon D3. Recently one of my colleagues sent his D3 in for a tuneup after it reached one million shutter cycles. Not because it stopped working, but because he thought it was a good time for a tuneup.