Facebook reels just suggested to me a video from dpreview called “Is Your Old Camera Holding You Back?”

I think you know my answer to this question, but it’s worth revisiting.

Short answer: yes, your old camera is holding you back, but my old camera isn’t holding me back.

Why? Maybe your pictures are boring and predictable to you, and you’d like to improve your narrative, your storytelling, but can’t find the magic piece of the puzzle to do that.

Buying a new camera seems like it could help, but it won’t.

Someone at a football game I covered recently told me she recently “upgraded” specifically to a camera with more pixels, and she said her pictures were more – what did she say? Vibrant, maybe?

One of the dirty tricks played on us has always been the way camera makers tell us that more pixels will equal better image quality. That is only true at the far extreme of the hobby: making really big prints, or working for high-paying clients.

The trick is that today, almost all the photographs you see on social media, on websites, and even in print, barely make it to two megapixels. Don’t believe me? Download one of your own full-size images from Facebook, for example, and open it on your laptop and, if you are on an Apple computer, click the file once and use the keyboard shortcut Command+I. On a PC, right-click the image, then select “properties.” It will tell you right there how many pixels are in your image. No Facebook photos ever publish at more than 2048 pixels on the long edge of the image. That’s 2 megapixels.

I have a photographer buddy in a faraway state who bought a 45-megapixel Nikon Z8. He posts everything he shoots with it on Facebook. When I ask him if he’s planning on making big prints to hang on the walls, display at a show, or sell to customers, I always get the “yeah, you’re right. I should.” But he doesn’t.

I keep going back to something I quoted from a camera maker last month: “If a camera is higher in resolution, memories are more vivid.” Every time I read it, it feels more absurd and even insulting.

The bottom line for me is this: sure, upgrade your camera all you want. But upgrading your skills – composition, light management, people management, lens management, and, maybe most important, when and where to be – will help you make better photos.