That's all completely fair enough. And yes; nobody can ever be completely objective really. We're all influenced, consciously or not, by marketing, ideology etc. I've always felt it very important to at least try to remain objective though, and form my opinions based on personal experience rather than allowing myself to be unduly influenced by external factors and forces. Hence my aversion to mythologising in this sort of sense.
As for choice of equipment; it's great that different people have different approaches. I'm definitely not a large format shooter, as I'm far too impatient and very much more into the 'moment'. But I can admire work done by artists using large format cameras. When the furore over an Andreas Gursky photo exploded (Rhein II I think), I, like many others, thought 'what's the fuss, it's quite boring'. But then I delved more deeply into Gursky's work, and discovered many great images. So I 'get' the process. And I find myself looking to take images of a similar 'feel',because I like the aesthetic. On another forum many years back, there was one poster who I found really, really annoying; arrogant, self-centred and conceited, and so utterly pretentious. He'd link to his website as a way of showing off (it was essentially product/advertising stuff, mostly heavily Photoshopped, and the work of a team rather than an individual). Most of the photos were, to me, unimpressive. Technically perfect, but completely lacking in soul. But there was one image that stood out for me, because it resonated with my own sense of aesthetics. I cannot lie and say I wasn't influenced in some way by it. My personal feelings towards this character were irrelevant; that one image stood on its own merits. And that's what matters. The image. I'm not interested in the 'journey'; only the destination.
For my own work, I'm as fussy as anyone else, over equipment. I want the best I can get, within reason and budget. Leica (fortunately) doesn't work for me in terms of my own requirements and budget. That's just how it is. When I was young, the best tool was an FM2. As I grew older (and my eyesight deteriorated), AF became more important. So equipment choice had to consider this aspect. I enjoy portraiture (amongst many other genres), and one crucially important aspect for me is lens choice of course. But beyond that, the lens has to be as sharp as possible. I like sharpness. Some of my early portraits were marred by not quite accurate focussing, or poor lens quality. So; we seek the best we can get. For my own amusement, I conducted a 'test' using 4 different Nikon 50mm lenses; an old f1.8 manual focus, an f1.8 AF-D, an f1.4 AF-S 'G', and the Z-mount f1.8. Mounted on a tripod, IBIS/VR turned off, same settings for each, all at f1.8. Rating them in order of sharpness, had the Z-mount first, then the AF-D, then the old MF, then lastly the f1.4. I posted the results on a photography forum I was using at the time, and asked people to guess which lens was which, from each photo. Some got the Z-mount, but quite a few wrongly guessed the f1.4. Now this (unscientifically I know, I make no claims otherwise) demonstrates the myth that surrounds some equipment. Several people thought that the f1.4 would naturally be sharper, because it's more expensive and coveted, right? Fact is, that particular lens isn't actually as sharp as other 50mm Nikkors, and in fact many of the f1.8 versions are in fact sharper. The f1.4 is more highly coveted because it's faster, but also because of the mythology. It was an interesting experiement, and I learned a lot from it, beyond the actual results themselves. I recouped my costs on the f1.4 and happily moved on.
So I hope that shower of verbosity helps to explain what I'm on about. TL;DR: get the tools that suit YOU, but concentrate on the image, and not the tools.
