I like beautiful cameras.
Cameras used to be beautiful objects, old pieces of metal and leather with the weight of something that truly felt mechanical and really felt like something had been captured from the world. These are the cameras I am proud to have lashed around my neck. It’s a feeling I can’t replicate with modern cameras and it’s sad because I want that mechanical feeling, I want incredible build quality and an impressive lens.
To achieve film like quality photography you need to really spend over a thousand pounds on a DSLR, an ugly hulk of rounded blackness. I ask myself — do I really want that bulk? Am I really that much of a serious photographer?
The answer, to my own surprise, is no.
I like beautiful cameras and I want to feel like taking a picture is a romantic thing. My photos are not born out of commercial necessity, they are born out of a personal visual passion for what I have seen and they are to be consumed by me and my close friends.
When I think of my favourite photos, they are not well prepared shots, they are moments where a shot just had to be taken for the sake of the visual. For a long time now that camera has been my iPhone camera and I have got a lot of mileage out of it, but the time has come where I feel like it’s not serious enough, I feel underwhelmed by the weight of its results. It’s time to get more serious, but, not in a dark ugly rounded body — in an effortless, slim and beautiful way.
The Fuji x100 — this is my Leica M5, this is the camera I have been dreaming of. Just within the realms of affordability, reviews that leave mouths agape and a quality that just isn’t around anymore. They call it a niche camera, for the professional who is having fun on the weekend and leaves the serious camera at home. For me, this is my perfect camera, it encompasses my idea of photography, for it to be more fun and less serious, but with a real edge of quality and the options to explore the depths of manual overrides.
