I'm sure some of you, even people that are not photographers have heard someone say or have even said this themselves. "Thats a nice camera it must take amazing pictures" or "I could take great pictures if owned a professional camera"......
I'm not mad though... its just ignorance really. People that don't know what actually goes into making photographs assume its someone just clicking a button and so i decided to do just that. Does anyone remember point and shoot cameras? The days prior to camera phones? They came in a ton of varieties. There are still a ton of them out there today.(probably not for much longer though). Queue the thrift store anthem(you know which one I'm talking about), its where all the latest tech in film technology is sold these days. It really didn't take me very long. I actually got to one store where they had tons of little cameras and and the best part was that they only cost $2-3. They were wrapped up in little baggies and some of them even had film in them. Now the problem with film is you really don't know how the picture will turn out until you develop them, So i wasn't sure if any of these cheap cameras would actually work. Well there was only one way to find out. So i grabbed a few of them and took them home to make sure all the functions still work. Luckily the first one i picked up worked perfectly. I grabbed a roll of Kodak Gold 400 and i was off and running.
I'll be completely honest, I had almost zero hope for this camera when I first got it. So many odd things about it. First off obviously there are no settings at all, I can turn the flash on/off/auto. I'm still not quite sure on how the auto focus works on this camera. Typically on most camera you'd hear some type of whining or whirring sound. This is actually dead silent. I searched google for a manual or something and from what I read, all I have to go by is a small little green led right by the viewfinder and when it turns green it's good to go. Well I threw I roll in and went with it. Aside from lack of focus assurance, you have your typical lack of settings that come with a point and shoot, no apeture, shutter speed control. Now with film point and shoots you can hack your film rolls DX code to fool the camera(Read this article about hacking DX codes). So you can have some control of what ASA/ISO to shoot at. There is one thing that comes in handy at times and thats the 90mm zoom this P&S has. Yes you heard right 90mm!!! It maxes out at an f-stop of 5.6 or somthing but i've never been a big bokeh whore. I'm usually shooting at f8 and up when photographing on the streets.
For all the lack of features on the camera it's still a camera. It takes pictures as it was built to do and when its put in the right hands, it can produce great images. I actually learned a lot using this cheap camera. I was no longer worried about what my exposure was cause i really didn't have control of any exposure settings. What i was able to do was train my mind and eyes to see photographs better before taking them. I learned more about light, composition and emotion in a photo before clicking the shutter. I also quickly found out what my limitations were and i'll add some examples at the end of the blog. There are tons of situations where i knew this camera would not work, but i took pictures any way to see what would come out of it.
For anyone else out there that has struggled with two many options on modern cameras i urge you to try a point and shoot challenge. You don't have to go and buy a film camera although its a pretty cheap options. You can use an old digital point and shoot lying around at home or The camera that's always on you(your phone).
Limiting your choices will free your mind.
