Daily Photo

The right camera is the one that you want to carry everywhere and that makes you see the world in photos ready to be taken.

I was chatting with x-eyedblonde (of this image) about this. Her Canon PowerShot G9 is not my idea of convenience, but it appears to be hers and has the right effect on her. A friend has a Kodak, and I wouldn’t recommend a Kodak digital camera to anyone (too pricey for too mediocre a camera), but it does this trick for her. So it’s the right camera.

My previous camera, a Canon Ixus 50, had this effect for me. A good camera, small enough to fit in my pocket, I knew its behaviour and it kept getting me to use it. The one before was a Casio Exilim EX-S20, which is so tiny it would have been a spy camera fifteen years ago, but is a pretty mediocre camera so didn’t do that for me. My current camera is a Fujifilm Finepix F20 (a cut-down model of the F30), which I bought for its incredible low-light powers, but it’s a bit big and somehow doesn’t do it for me, even though I still carry it everywhere.

What’s your favourite camera? What camera makes you just want carry it everywhere and take pictures all the time?

Photo by David Gerard, taken 25th October 2007 on a Canon Digital Ixus 50 without a damn flash at the Elsinore in Whitby. All rights reserved. Simon carries a Canon EOS 400D with battery grip and 28-135mm f/3.5-4.6 IS lens. He has a PowerShot A470 in his pocket and an old Ixus 330 (that I sold him) as backup. Jane carries an EOS 350D with Canon EFS 18-55mm lens.