This article by Ivo Guimaraes reminded me of that time.
I was in such a creative rut that I didn’t pick up a camera for weeks, months even. And when I finally had to (I don’t remember the occasion) I wanted to take the easy way out and just use the crappy point-and-shoot. But as the image quality was so poor, I knew I had to find ways to make the images more interesting and fun to look at. So there I was, suddenly back on track again with enough creativity for the world.
Recently my wife bought me a Canon EOS-M as a gift, which was the first attempt by Canon on the mirrorless market. Well, if you are into photo equipment at all, then you likely know that this camera was the biggest flop on the market of recent digital camera history. Besides having really bad focusing issues, it was no competition for what other brands had already launched, which is my wife was able to buy the kit for about $300, as everyone was dumping their inventory of it.
I would never have bought this camera myself, but it was a present, so I decided to give it a try.
I opened the box and it reminded me of my beloved Coolpix 995. The EOS-M is a really good looking camera, with a great design, and the fact that it was just not a simple compact camera got me a lot more interested on it. The test shots I made after a firmware update fixed some focussing issues, got me back to that loving feeling all over again.
Those were great images, and the pixel peeper inside me was happy with the image quality when I looked at them on the computer screen. The fact that everybody was considering this camera Canon’s ugly duckling, made me love it even more, because it had some kind of “misfit” attitude amongst all the other mirrorless camera out there.
Why have a play camera?
Pretty soon I was buying accessories, and taking it everywhere with me. At last I had a new play camera – the point of which is to have it and use it all the time! The fact that it didn’t cost a lot of money, made me comfortable using this camera in situations I would never use my expensive DSLRs, like underwater with a cheap protective bag.
It even got me carried away experimenting with some crazy extender combination with my EF 70-200 2.8L coupled with the Canon 2x extender and the Kenko 2x Teleplus Pro 300, giving me some serious telephoto ability for wildlife pictures.
Bottom line
So, the bottom line is that even though this camera was released in 2012 and the EOS-M2 and the EOS-M3 were released after that, I still have great fun with it and don’t feel any need to upgrade to a newer model.
I guess I just feel really free experimenting with this camera without being worried about damaging it, or being bothered to carry it around. For me this is what a pet camera means despite of brand, model or type of camera.
Photography is about taking pictures, and the best camera is the one you feel more comfortable with, for what you want to shoot.
Read the full article over at Digital Photography School.
Source: Digital Photography School
