
My first dream machine.
My first serious camera was a Mamiya-Sekor 1000 DTL; I guess that was in 1972. I ordered it from 47th Street Photo in New York. There was something about the viewfinder, the fresnel screen: When you snapped something into focus, it was like looking at a 3D finished print right there in the camera. It was a slice of irreplaceable time.
I loved that camera. I took a lot of pictures of my toddlers, and a lot of my camping trips. Some of those photographs still exist, grainy black and white prints I produced in a laughably primitive home darkroom. Any iPhone would be better, of course, complete with Instagram-style filters that can faithfully replicate every freaking mistake I ever made as a fledgling 35mm photographer. But I didn’t have an iPhone then. In a way I’m glad I didn’t. I wouldn’t trade one of my crude black-and-white prints for one million Instagram photos of a sunset or somebody’s lunch.
A couple of years later, I bought a Canon Ftb, black. I kept that camera for 30 years. I shot so many photos with it that the black finish was worn down on the edges to show the brass underneath. I liked that. It made me look serious. But then I went digital and sold everything on eBay.
I still wonder sometimes if that wasn’t a mistake. Actually, I know it was. Because I’ve bought — let’s see — more than a dozen different digital cameras since then. Each time I paid more than I did for any of my film cameras, and each time it was with the conviction that all the new technical features would make a world of difference in my photography.
They never did. They never do. Somehow I’ve managed to preserve maybe half of the photos I shot during the 70s, the ones on slides that I was later able to scan. They suck, mostly, but there’s no irony about them. They’re pretty honest. It’s impossible to tinker with the exposure. And I don’t need any filter to impart nostalgia. Thirty or forty years later, the nostalgia arrives unbidden. I have three or four thousand slides. Shot over thirty-odd years. That’s about how many photos your average digital photographer takes in a week.
Back to the new camera. The one I’m looking at is a real starship: image stabilization, 10 frames per second, color that’s realer than real. Auto-focus at the speed of thought. It’s weather-sealed too, to endure those camping trips I no longer take. Do I need this camera? No way. But still I want it.
A serious man would ask why. Since there are no serious men around, I guess it’s up to me: I want it for the same reason anybody wants any material thing: Somewhere down deep, I believe that the barrier between me and my old, best dreams can be solved by hardware. Never mind all the imperfect cameras later, all the evidence to the contrary. I still believe it.
So this is a cry for help, I guess. I don’t need any new camera, but I’m afraid of what it means if I admit that’s the case.
This is me and sewing equipment. The snow falling startled me for a second. Ha.
Heh. We all have our demons. The snow thing is something I do only in December.
David,
You clearly need a new camera.
Don’t be my enabler, man.
New camera for the new grand??? Well written–I enjoyed this.
Hey, that’s as good an excuse as any! Thanks, Deb.
What kind of camera are we talking about, father?
This one. But I don’t plan on getting it anytime soon.