So what makes a camera a "pro" camera?

[keithfullermusic]

A pro level camera must have:

1) a sensor with 14+ stops of DR
2) the ability to shoot 4K at 120fps minimum
3) the ability to take clean shots of the back of the lens cap
4) the highest score possible on DxO
5) the ability to post to Facebook
6) the ability to find jobs
7) a price of at least $3,500

I'm sure i forgot a few things, but that's what I consider the bare minimum of a "Pro-Level Camera."

 

[expatinasia]

Just look at cars. All Mercedes-Benz will get you from a to b, but the S series may do it in a lot more comfort and style than the lowly C series.

So the S series is for professional drivers? Why are so many taxi cabs Toyotas and Fords, and so many limos Lincolns and Chryslers?

However, Mercedes does make vehicles for professional drivers. Here's one:

Haha! I knew the car example was a bad example when I wrote it, and I think you know that. But a professional taxi driver will drive what he is allowed or given. This varies all over the world, and the company or individual that does that as a profession will try to choose a car that is economical, easy/cheap to repair with lots of spare parts around and likely to run for a long time. A professional racing driver will need a different car. But if you swap the two around and give the taxi driver the racing car and the racing driver the taxi, that does not suddenly make the taxi car a professional racing car simply because it is being driven by the racing driver.

Generally speaking, a manufacturers top of the range product is aimed at pros. Take knives, pans, laptops (the business lines), and I presume microscopes etc. Even washing machines, professional grade washing machines are different from a consumer washing machine, it has nothing to do with the operator.

My point being that a 50D in the hands of a pro is still not a pro camera, just that pro's camera. In the same way that a 1D X in the hands of an amateur does not make that amateur a pro.

There is the romantic notion that the best camera is the one in your hands at that moment, and that is true. But it is not true that a camera suddenly becomes pro grade just because it is being used by a pro.

 

[Orangutan]

It has to be able to take that abuse and keep working, same for lenses. It also has to function satisfactorily under stressful, rushed situations.

Is a Hasselblad MFD a "pro" camera? Does it meet your above criteria? If the answer the first is yes, and to the second is no, then your criteria may be indicative, but are not definitive.

 

[RLPhoto]

It has to be able to take that abuse and keep working, same for lenses. It also has to function satisfactorily under stressful, rushed situations.

Is a Hasselblad MFD a "pro" camera? Does it meet your above criteria? If the answer the first is yes, and to the second is no, then your criteria may be indicative, but are not definitive.

It can't be a pro camera because it has a pop-up flash. XD

 

[wsmith96]

You're all wrong. Only the D810 is a pro camera and you all know it!

No! GoPro! The name says it all.... Go Pro.....

Nobody would mount 29 D810's to their car, but they would (and did) with GoPro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6wI_lBj3mc

To me it sounds like a recommendation ;D ;D ;D

 

[Sporgon]

It has to be able to take that abuse and keep working, same for lenses. It also has to function satisfactorily under stressful, rushed situations.

Is a Hasselblad MFD a "pro" camera? Does it meet your above criteria? If the answer the first is yes, and to the second is no, then your criteria may be indicative, but are not definitive.

The Hasseldlad MFD most definitely meets that criteria.

 

[Loswr]

Generally speaking, a manufacturers top of the range product is aimed at pros. Take knives, pans, laptops (the business lines), and I presume microscopes etc.

My Calphalon Commercial cookware was bought at Macy's, and my Wusthof pro knives came from Williams-Sonoma...not a restaurant supplier. I've never seen a 'pro' microscope. General Motors ran a marketing campaign for their Professional Grade trucks...I know a few people who use them to commute to their professional office jobs.

The top end is aimed at people who are willing and able to pay the higher price. "Pro" is purely a marketing distinction.

 

[wsmith96]

I think manufacturers decide which are the pro models, whether it be a set of knives, a camera or laptop (though in the latter they are called business models rather than pro).

Errm, being pedantic for just a moment...I have a Macbook Pro laptop. Must make me a pro! Whoo-hoo!
This is an entertaining thread! 8) I hope the OP has got something out of it.

-pw

The word "pro" used in a product name is often used to entice people to buy up - especially in compute equipment. As an example, I don't remember the models, but one of the series of macbook pro's was pretty much identical to a lower range HP business laptop. A friend of mine was able to run a bios hack and run OSX from 2 ~$2000 macbook on a ~$450 HP laptop. Of course, the HP didn't have the all metal body, but that was the primary difference.

http://www.hackcollege.com/blog/2012/10/26/hp-probook-4530s-hackintosh-macbook.html

Yes, I did get something out of this thread. I had read in another thread that having a better auto focus system on the 6D would make it more professional. To me that didn't make sense as there are many others out there that use the 6D that find the camera fine. What I believe the person was saying was that the 6D's capabilities didn't meet their needs, but that doesn't necessarily make the 6D less of a professional camera - it just wasn't the right one for them.

I found that most are struggling to provide a definitive list of attributes that make a camera a professional camera. I also found that comments kept shifting to the person behind the camera, rather than focusing on the camera itself - which comes back to the difficulty answering the question. The one attribute that has been repeated, and that I also agree with, is build durability to maintain the operation of the camera through daily use. Beyond that, I think it's up to the owner and their needs.

 

[Orangutan]

Generally speaking, a manufacturers top of the range product is aimed at pros. Take knives, pans, laptops (the business lines), and I presume microscopes etc.

The top end is aimed at people who are willing and able to pay the higher price.

I think we're having another one of those "is" vs "ought" arguments.

The "is" group asserts (and I agree) that a high-end camera is largely bought by people willing to pay for it, most of whom will not use it for professional work.

The "ought" group asserts that a high-end camera ought to be built and marketed to professionals, and it's fine if wealthy amateurs also want to buy one.

I don't believe there's a clear definition of a pro camera, but I'm pretty sure Canon has a pro marketing department.

 

[wsmith96]

Generally speaking, a manufacturers top of the range product is aimed at pros. Take knives, pans, laptops (the business lines), and I presume microscopes etc.

My Calphalon Commercial cookware was bought at Macy's, and my Wusthof pro knives came from Williams-Sonoma...not a restaurant supplier. I've never seen a 'pro' microscope. General Motors ran a marketing campaign for their Professional Grade trucks...I know a few people who use them to commute to their professional office jobs.

The top end is aimed at people who are willing and able to pay the higher price. "Pro" is purely a marketing distinction.

If you are able to go into the kitchen at a restaurant, I bet you won't find calphalon or wusthof knives either.

 

[bdunbar79]

You're all wrong. Only the D810 is a pro camera and you all know it!

No! GoPro! The name says it all.... Go Pro.....

Nobody would mount 29 D810's to their car, but they would (and did) with GoPro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6wI_lBj3mc

This is exactly why I love this site so much! ;D

 

[Khnnielsen]

Generally speaking, a manufacturers top of the range product is aimed at pros. Take knives, pans, laptops (the business lines), and I presume microscopes etc.

My Calphalon Commercial cookware was bought at Macy's, and my Wusthof pro knives came from Williams-Sonoma...not a restaurant supplier. I've never seen a 'pro' microscope. General Motors ran a marketing campaign for their Professional Grade trucks...I know a few people who use them to commute to their professional office jobs.

The top end is aimed at people who are willing and able to pay the higher price. "Pro" is purely a marketing distinction.

The pro designation is not without meaning. There are products, which is almost entirely bought for professional purposes, and are tailored to suit the professionals.

Sachtler tripods for example. The most expensive model can carry a payload of 140 kg, which is aimed at studio cameras. I have never heard of anyone spending 200k on a studio camera for hobby purposes. No one buys a ENG camera for fun either.

 

[gsealy]

Professional level equipment

A professional level camera is one that meets the performance requirements of the person (the professional) using it. People who make a living by taking pictures or shooting videos must have solid equipment that will reliably perform out in the field. The requirements could come in many forms depending on the particular needs of the shooter. In some cases it could be weather sealing or it could be shutter actuations. In other cases it is the quality of the image or it could be auto focus speed and accuracy. The point is that when a person's livelihood depends on the equipment they are using then that equipment has to deliver not some of the time, but ALL of the time.

I recently attended a golf tournament. There were pros there racing around from hole to hole taking lots and lots of pictures of the players from all angles around the greens and tee boxes. If you were close enough, then you would hear brrraaattttt.... brrraaatttt.... as the camera fired off 10 or 12 shots catching the players. It sounded like a machine gun going off. They were using 1D's that gave them the FPS and AF that they needed. They probably took thousands of pictures that day. Could these guys afford to have a camera that locked up or failed to focus to get those shots? No way. They wouldn't get paid.

 

[kphoto99]

The top end is aimed at people who are willing and able to pay the higher price. "Pro" is purely a marketing distinction.

Nuro has hit the nail on the head. Adding anything else to this discussion is pointless.

 

[The Bad Duck]

Clearly it has to say "pro" in the name of the camera.
So... canon pro-1 must be the only canon pro camera, right?

Canon Pro-1! Whoa! (Rhymes with Pro...) Now there's a killer of a camera. This is embarrassing, but I had the misfortune to know someone whose neighbors brother-in-law actually had one of the ten or so of these cameras that were sold in this country.

You know.... the pro-1 has a sensor made by... sony!!!

 

[sgs8r]

The features. Pro cameras have advanced features that pros need and/or know how to take advantage of. Manufacturers generally have more than one "pro" camera because there is more than one kind of pro and they may need different (but overlapping) sets of features. These include things like:

- high durability
- high frame rate
- high performance, highly configurable AF
- mirror lockup
- high dynamic range
- better noise performance
- 100% viewfinder
- usability features (e.g. extra buttons/wheels/etc. that make it fast and easy to change settings

etc.


Saying "the person behind the camera" is glib, but wrong. Are all the cheap cameras in the Digital Rev series now "pro" cameras because they are being used by pro photographers? Does a camera switch from pro to non-pro (and back) depending on who is holding it? Obviously not. As with other tools, whether it is a "pro" tool or not is independent of whether a pro is actually using it. The results, of course, depend on both the tool and the user.

So pro cameras? In the current Canon line, it is the 1Dx and 5D3. 7D? Not really (and I have one). It's kind of a transitional camera for poorer pros that can't afford the 1DX and the lenses to go with it. Similarly, the 6D is mostly for those who can't swing the cost of the 5D3 (it may have a small sensor advantage because it is newer, but for pros this is trumped by the AF and usability features of the 5D3).

 

[NunoMatos]

If the gear doesn't matter, then I change my 1100d for your 1Dx

 

[IgotGASbadDude]

According to most concert venues a "professional" camera is one with a detachable lens. This is a stupid answer which shows they're still mentally stuck in the '80's when the difference between a standard film camera and a "point and shoot" was night and day. Back then those good images were valued (I think) because they had re-sell value in magazines. Made sense back in the day . . .

Today, they're afraid of my 5D3 + Art 50 lens because it "looks" professional. What they're to ignorant to understand is the Gx1 Mark II they're letting me use will do similar quality.

The most hilarious part is they won't let me bring in the 5D3, yet I can stand there all night using my iPhone 6 to record video & stills. And under certain lighting circumstances, even that thing produces pretty darn good still images.

Everyone these days has a camera at concerts. I wish bands/mangagement/venues etc. would use their brains and encourage people to record the best images and video they could.

Maybe I'm missing something here? ???

 

[NancyP]

Neuroanatomist, here's a "pro" microscope for you: http://phys.org/news/2013-01-three-photon-microscopy-biological-imaging.html
Image the full thickness of a live mouse's cortex! But you must have seen this - I put it up here for the entertainment of other geeks.

 

[Orangutan]

The features. Pro cameras have advanced features that pros need and/or know how to take advantage of. Manufacturers generally have more than one "pro" camera because there is more than one kind of pro and they may need different (but overlapping) sets of features. These include things like:

- high durability
- high frame rate
- high performance, highly configurable AF
- mirror lockup
- high dynamic range
- better noise performance
- 100% viewfinder
- usability features (e.g. extra buttons/wheels/etc. that make it fast and easy to change settings

Does a pro body need all of them? Some of them? Certain specific combinations?

Saying "the person behind the camera" is glib, but wrong.

No, it's a way of saying that each pro needs a different subset of the features you have in your list above, and that each pro will choose a camera that meets their needs.

I once met a pro photojournalist who used to travel to unstable areas. He would take several cheap DLSRs because he knew one or more would be taken from him (requested). He'd pull out (and hide) his flash cards frequently, and be prepared to surrender the camera. It was his choice to use cheap gear because in the end he'd have his photos.

"the person behind the camera" is the one who chooses the right tool for the job, and uses it to produce professional work.