“Nope. thats not it”, i fumbled with the menu on the Sony A7s looking for a way to move the cursor for focusing on the electronic viewfinder. Behind those mountains of menus, lies a simple and important feature that i needed, one that just selects one of the focusing points on the camera. It’s deja’vu when i looked at the menu’s on the Canon 6D and the Nikon DF, “what? why would i want to select a 7Mp pixel only on a three given options and why would i want a fine jpg when the basic looks just as good.”
A moment of flashback happened, I was 15 and standing at the school’s field hanging out with my fellow friends, a weird crowd some say. Kien Hong, an introvert that went on to become the top graduate in the country, was just next to me. “hey kien hong, see i got myself a new pen and here is my notebook (paper) that i gonna write my school notes on.”, I showed off my fancy pen and premium notebook and how excited i am to use these tools to improve on my grades, Kien Hong gave me a friendly smile and took out his 555 small notebook and a kilometrico pen, those were the most economic and simple stationaries you can find back then, same combo used by the canteen’s food seller for jotting down the 4D magnum sports toto number.
“How in the world did we ended up here?”, i snapped back into today’s timeline and thought about the direction we are heading in our social interaction, cameras and life in a glance. In my bag are two old film camera, a Nikon F2 and Nikon U2. The F2 in particular was the older camera and with a legendary status while the U2 was premature in its arrival and DOA on 2003.
The F2 changes everything when it was introduced. It quickly became the standard for photojournalists and professionals for 35mm. Some say that it killed Leica’s dominance and pushed Leica towards a niche market and Leica never did recovered.
Film cameras are amazingly simple. You have that Shutter, Aperture that you control on your lens and you lived with whatever ISO film u used. Planning ahead is almost a necessity for the shoot that you do. Life was simple then and even now, i enjoyed using the same basic controls. That Kien Hong’s combo is a constant reminder on how little adding bells and whistles complicates the actual learning process and results.
Images, especially portraits, should be about “feel“. Feel cannot be measured in megapixels, sharpness nor does it gets better just because the camera have a longer and updated technical spec. Last week, Malaysia experienced what we called the “winter” days. Unprecedented and unheard of here, we saw the temperature plummets to 22C, in contrast my usual room air conditioning is 25C. Such drastic drop in temperature on an equatorial country is laughable, almost as ironic as the crypto-currencies volatilities.
We added so much complexities to life and instead of having more quality of life, we are suffocating it. Mark Zuckerberg recently announced a change of heart in how he wants Facebook to be used, God bless his soul, those ads and baits in social medias didn’t add any value to any social interactions.
In respond to the letter written by the 27 year old girl who have passed away, we all can make decisions to have a richer life and even what we have now should never be taken for granted. Collecting items is just one of those things that adds nothing to life equations nor to the quality of life.
Watches, cameras, bags, phones and cars. Well you name it, chances are you know somebody who is into it. I am all into “being” rather than “having” as a resolution for the year. It’s a worthy resolution 🙂
The F2 have seen more than most of us in this lifetime. That was never it’s intention. It was supposed to be a tool for us to see more of life.
Live and prosper my readers.
M changing lives with images. 