As expected, before this Norway trip, I had a big freak-out about what cameras to take, which led to too many discretionary purchases. Let me explain.
There were two main cameras before the trip. The big one is the Canon EOS 6D mkii. It’s a great camera and ticks a lot of boxes: full-frame, weather sealed, uses the EF lenses and I’ve got a couple of great L lenses for it, runs forever on a single battery, excellent sensor, built-in GPS and it’s a DSLR so it doesn’t have the usual problems a mirrorless has. More than that, it’s got the usual Canon design language and I like the way it feels, the way the controls are laid out, and the way the Canon works. And as much as I like it, it is not light or small. Glue two pounds of glass to the front end of it, and it’s really not great to haul around all day. And I’ve taken some okay photos with it, but it seems like I was almost doing better with a much lighter crop-sensor camera.
In 2023, I got a Sony Alpha a6400. It’s half the weight of the 6D and much easier to shove in a bag. I’ve taken this camera to India, Singapore, and Spain, and it’s okay, but the ergonomics of it are bugging me. It’s just different, and I can’t explain it. The menu system is complete garbage, but it feels so toy-like and cheap, it’s not enjoyable to use at all. And there’s something off about the color space or the exposure program or something, and I’m constantly blowing shots with it. It’s hard to use in daylight, and isn’t entirely capable at night. And regardless of the time of day, it seriously chews through batteries. I often think that I need better lenses or more practice or more patience with it. And then I go take a hundred shots in an afternoon and look at them and wonder what’s wrong.
And I struggle to say what “kind” of photographer I am. I’m not like a street photographer or a devoted landscape photographer or specialize in portraiture or whatever. I don’t know if I am even a photographer in the artistic sense of the word. I like to capture things, and I like to go back and look through photos to revisit a mood or relive a trip or write about something that happened in the past. I am more of a “document everything” person, and if I get a great shot out of it, cool. But that lack of a specific genre or focus makes me flail when it comes to buying gear, because that’s really the first question someone asks when you are trying to find out what to get, right?
I also have been wandering back and forth on photos versus video, and I have no answers there. Since the 90s, I’ve experimented with different cameras, thinking I needed to shoot video to capture a mood or feeling or vacation or whatever. That started with buying a Hi8 camcorder back in like 1996, which was entirely impractical and largely useless to me. I never took that camera with me, because it weighed so much and I was never comfortable walking around with it and taking random video. I absolutely love the videos I did capture (see https://rumored.com/randomlife) but with the impracticality of it, I never used it.
So, two things. First, I decided to get another Canon mirrorless. I was reluctant to do this because i bought an EOS-M1 about ten years ago and bought into their flop of a mirrorless system. They’ve since moved to a new platform, and it’s stabilized and picked up steam, so I thought I’d give it a try. I also thought maybe going back to crop sensor might help. So I bought a Canon EOS R10. It uses a new type of lens, the RF; I didn’t want to buy into that with all my EF lenses, so I bought the adaptor. This also lets me use some of my old EF-S crop lenses from when I had Rebel cameras, so that’s useful. The R10 is amazingly light, uses the same batteries as my old Rebel T6i, and isn’t horribly bad on battery life, especially compared to the Sony. It’s not weatherproof (which was a problem in Norway, walking in the snow all day every day) and there’s no more GPS. (I don’t know why, but I love having a GPS on my cameras.) It also has incredible autofocus and a great sensor. Not only does it have eye tracking autofocus, but it can eye track on animals, which is useful for someone who takes a thousand pictures of their cats a year.
More than anything, the R10 feels like a Canon camera. The Program mode works like I’m used to. It feels the same in my hand. I don’t have to think to know where the knobs are. It’s not as full-featured as the 6D, but it feels the same. It feels the same as both of my Rebels, and even my old EOS 620 film camera.
The other thing, the video thing: I don’t know why, but on a lark, I bought a DJI Osmo Pocket 3. It’s an amazing little gizmo, a gimbal camera in a thing the size of a TV remote, with a screen that flips from portrait to landscape. This was largely a useless purchase, as I’m not going to be full-time vlogging over on TikTok or anything like that. But it does shoot incredible video, and it’s extremely small. I think it’s close to being the perfect “document-everything” camera, and I got a few good shots out of it in Norway.
So, the Sony’s probably going to go. I’m too lazy and impatient to sell it on eBay, and I know I’ll get nothing for it on KEH. But I think the Sony experiment is over. I am not sure if I’m going to start buying RF lenses, although given the current state of things, probably not a good idea to be dropping more money on gear. And the film thing – I’ve still got a few dozen rolls on ice, but I have lost all passion for shooting film these days. I feel like if I’m going to make a bunch of mistakes with exposure, I shouldn’t do it at a dollar a shot. I was completely unhappy with the film I burned in Iceland in 2023, and haven’t gotten back into it since. Fair enough.
And all of this is secondary to what I should be doing: writing. That’s the main priority, so I should get back to it.