Yes, and it is also up to us what kind of life we want to have. It all depends where you want to be on the spectrum of life. As it happens I do not perceive myself to have any artistic abilities with anything. I'm intrigued as much by the mechanism and what it can allow me to do as anything else. While I have learned a little bit about composition and lighting, most of my interests in shooting is with subjects where those things are not a consideration, things that move and not always when the light is good. I am not at all sure I fully understand the whole concept of art as it is associated with a camera. I therefore question a lot of the talk about photography being art. I just don't get that.

I am as interested in the tech aspects about cameras, and computers, as I am about what comes out of them. I am also, at 75, not wishing to be hung up at a particular point in my life, am not still listening to Elvis, driving a '50 Mercury with a Minolta Hi-Matic fixed 45mm lens rangefinder on the seat beside me while trying to pull out into today's freeway traffic on the way to shoot a football game and then a wedding.

Just go to sleep with your 5D3 or D800 and wake up in a few years and you'll be disoriented and may not be able to overcome it. Oh yow, you'll still get you some really good pictures but will you really when everyone else is shooting holograms and projecting them onto the sides of 100 story buildings made of some material we have yet to discover. You snooze, you lose. You lock yourself into a particular place and refuse to budge, somebody'll move soon enough, maybe in a front loader, you and your 5D3, your Mercury, your Minolta, and all. How artistic will you look then?

Not many of us will make a mark in the art world with a camera. And as much as I bristle every time I hear the name and the analogy of the camera and the stove, look where Ansel Adams is - yep, he made his mark and with regard to the whole idea of the world of art, his most magnificent work is relegated to a few obscure back alley galleries around the country and they are mostly shabby affairs not fit to be associated with the art world. No amount of semantics will elevate a photograph to the level of a Mona Lisa or a Starry Nights. I don't even say the word 'art' when talking about photography but I'm still not going to be talked into freezing up at some point in my life and staying there for the rest of it. So, that's where I am on the spectrum. Not interested, you say. It goes both ways.

How's that for a new can of worms? :-)

It is the way it is . Since these things are really microprocessors with some glass attached, they follow the same power for dollar curve as computers. I find it unnecessary to "keep up," although I understand the urge to do so. I will probably get the D800 next year when Apple comes out with a desktop machine with the next generation processor, but I have to tell you my D3 (12MP) and D7000 produce fantastic images. In fact, the D3 can do things the D800 cannot do. If your camera made great images when you bought it and it still makes those images today, it is hardly obsolete. When it can no longer produce the images you need, THEN a new unit might be needed.