If you ask a football coach, he will tell you bigger is better. If you ask photographers, they will tell you bigger is better. If you asked Debbie, she will also tell you bigger is better! So, is bigger really better?

That debate may continue forever!

During one of my first weeks on the job in the early 1990’s, at my former employer, the Sentinel & Enterprise, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, I was at Crocker Elementary School. I don’t recall what the assignment was, but I do remember what the teacher, Debbie showed me after I was done shooting.

I believe I had a Nikon F4 camera at the time - a big, rugged professional 35mm camera made of titanium. But Debbie put me to shame, pulling out of her closet, this giant Kodak Instamatic X-15 camera prop. Wow! Can you imagine the size negative this would have produced if it was real? And that huge flash cube would have started my hair on fire.

Football coaches love to have the biggest players on the line, and photographers envy each other’s big lenses - you know the coffee-can-sized ones that stand out on the sidelines of a game. But Debbie wasn’t going to let my big Nikon show her up!

So the answer is, in a photographer’s world, bigger is better!

-Bob Hammerstrom

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