I've read that a professional photographer should have at least two camera bodies, with one serving as a backup. How important is it to have a backup camera body? Consider both amateur and professional use cases.
Answer
Professional:
Short answer: Are you mad ? !!!!!!! [ :-) ]
Longer answer: For a professional lack of a backup body is ~= "death-deferred".
You could consider that "being able to access an alternative acceptably quickly at an acceptable cost" is the equivalent to having a backup body, so if you were a studio only photographer and there was a 24/7/365 camera hire shop on the ground floor who always had acceptable bodies in stock to hire then, maybe that would do, but also, pigs may fly.
If you are photographing a wedding / sports event / social function / wild-life assignment / ... and "my camera broke" is not going to be acceptable, and is liable to cause immense (or any) embarrassment, financial loss, loss of prestige and reputation, reduction or elimination of future opportunities, ... - then you must have one. If you are a free lancer and nobody cares if you front with photos and it doesn't bother you either, feel free to trust Murphy. Most professionals are not in that position.
Many professionals who carry a second camera will use it in parallel with their "main camera", allowing changing camera rater than changing lenses. Or more options when changing.
A backup body CAN be whatever you "can get away with". But when you consider the cost of lenses, flashes, memory cards, computer equipment, software, general accessories and your costs of staying alive, then the cost of an acceptably good backup body becomesa small fraction of the total.
Note: Try not to utterly depend on having to use medium format, or Leica or ... :-).
Amateur:
If you are serious, it's nice, and the cost of an "acceptable enough" second body can be quite modest. When you buy an entry level used camera as your first DSLR and it stretches your budget, then buying two is obviously not an option. But if you carry a D800, then adding a used D7000, or not selling it when you upgrade, may make a lot of difference to your life. It also depends on what sort of photography you do, where you go to take photos and how much you care.
I consider myself "semi professional" in that my "day job" is as an electronic designer, but photography is an obsession (just ask my wife) and I much more than pay for my camera equipment with paying work, (assuming you ignore the hourly rate for my time after capital costs :-) ). I have had a camera die due to being dropped (a very rare occurrence) at midnight on returning home from a paid stage show when I had an unpaying wedding that coming morning. The backup was inferior but did the job.
I have travelled to China on numerous occasions in recent years on business. I can make do with a combined pocketable video/still camera for business (Sanyo XACTI) but take a DSLR (x2) for frenetic running around outside factory hours and for tourist mode activities after business phase ends. (eg the Xian visit that produced the bronze horse photo on the front page at present was amateur only on the Shanghai-Xian-Shanghai portion. I have 1000+ photos from the Terracotta warriors. I would hav estill had them if 1 of my 2 DSLRs had died. Neither did.) So the DSLRs are used for business as I have them there, and give me better business photos, but are "essential" for amateur use. I have had a camera become highly walking wounded while in China (I live in NZ). The backup I carried was as good image wise, just not as many bells and whistles. I do more unpaid or expenses only weddings/parties/events etc than paid ones. Both sorts are fun, but one sort I get paid for having fun. I have never had a camera fail at a wedding or event or stage show during the actual event, but I carry two cameras with a specialist lens on the second. (Usually either a 50 mm prime or a 500mm mirror lens on the backup depending on circumstances. ie 500mm is not usually much use at a wedding during a church service (has happened) and a 50mm prime is less useful on a long rally straight).
Conclusion in both cases:
You'll never regret having a second camera available at a moment's notice after you forget what you paid for it.
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