Which Camera?

My Olympus broke again last week. A shutter that refuses to close, a leak of light I never asked for. The repair bill would be higher than its worth, and still I find myself wondering: should I?

The question, which camera should I buy. haunts more of us than we care to admit. The answer, I suspect, is never just technical. A machine will not change the spirit. And yet: without the machine there is no photograph.

Robert Adams once wrote that art’s moral function is to keep intact an affection for life. I think of this when I hold a Canon R6, its high-speed shutter flooding me with thousands of frames, so many that affection begins to dilute into noise. And I think of it again when I pick up a medium-format body, the weight in my hands demanding a slower breath, a longer look, one deliberate exposure.

It isn’t that the photographer makes the picture and the camera does not matter. It is that the camera, in its limitations, invites us into a way of being. A Point-and-Shoot suggests spontaneity. A digital mirrorless offers velocity. A broken Olympus teaches patience, sometimes too much.

So when we ask “which camera,” what we are really asking is: which pace of life am I choosing right now?

For me … after a season of snapshots, after the good advice of Anastasia Patagona, after house-cleaning my eyes—I am ready to move toward something slower, intentional, painterly. Perhaps medium format. Perhaps not.

As always, the answer will only come after the act. First the image, then the understanding.