As a professional photographer and tech writer, I tend to have more than a few cameras to choose from when packing for a trip. But on my last vacation, I made an unusual choice for someone who makes a living writing about the latest cameras: I dug a 20-year-old compact camera out of my closet and packed it in my bag.
I took the 2006 Canon PowerShot A540 on a short camping trip. But the A540 isn’t a camera that I bought on eBay because single-digit-megapixel retro compacts are making a comeback.
The camera was my grandmother’s. For a long time after she died, I was too grief-stricken to even look at it – but when I eventually pulled it out of the closet, I realized it still had an SD card inside. While the camera had a few photos of her garden and family, the memory card was largely filled with her travel photos.
Inspired by my grandmother’s travel photos and the resurging popularity of early digicams, I packed the 20-year-old PowerShot for my camping trip.
The compact wasn’t the only camera that I brought along – I also brought a mirrorless with a telephoto zoom, knowing I would be doing some birding – but I took more photos with the Canon PowerShot than I did with my iPhone.
The PowerShot A540 isn’t just unusual compared to today’s cameras because it houses the older CCD sensor technology. I was surprised that, despite being compact, the camera still includes manual modes and a viewfinder – and not the modern electronic type but the classic, old-school optical kind.
My goal in bringing a camera that’s two decades old on vacation wasn’t to take better photos, but to spend less of my vacation on a screen.
The optical viewfinder was a big part of that, enabling me to shoot photos but stay off my iPhone, even when I didn’t want to grab my mirrorless camera, like on a bike ride or heading to the less picturesque parts of travel, like the laundromat.
The photos that I captured have that imperfect but charming feel of early digital camera technology. The colors from the CCD sensor felt true to my memories, with perhaps a bit more punch.
The best part of the images, however, didn’t stem from that sensor but the lens. The images are much softer than the sharpness standards of modern cameras. The photographs look like I used a diffusion filter – one of my favorite accessories for my mirrorless camera – with a softer look.
That imperfect lens created a glow from bright light sources. I was particularly fond of that glow when photographing the sun sparkling off the lake.
Using a 20-year-old camera also reminded me of how far camera technology has come – shutter lag is an issue and getting the timing perfect was a challenge. There were also inevitably shots with missed focus.
And the 6MP sensor doesn’t capture as much detail – but that means the 2GB SD card, which I refuse to delete my grandmother’s photographs from, still has room for over 500 more images.
Photographs are tangible emotions. I believe that when the camera in my hands evokes a particular emotion – even when that emotion is grief – I have a stronger connection to those photographs. Emotional cameras create emotional images.
I could have taken better photos with my modern mirrorless camera – but I don’t regret digging a two-decade-old camera out of my closet to capture snapshots of my vacation. When it comes to memories, emotions will always mean more than technical perfection.
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