The Best Camera is the One That Fits in Your Pocket

I’ve been doing amateur photography for quite a long time, for longer than I have been coding in fact.

I’ve started with a Nikon FE and a 50mm Nikkor lens I borrowed from my dad. Taking pictures was something delightful for a kid my age, but frankly I did a shitty job at that. Too much complexity and too little knowledge of what the fuck I was doing.

(Insert obligatory “I have no idea what I’m doing” meme here.)

I later moved to a Sony Cybershot T-something. (I can’t remember the exact reference.) The picture quality was crap but I carried that shit everywhere I went. It literally fit in my pocket, whatever the conditions.

When the time had come to get into more serious photography, I bought a Canon Rebel XT, or 350D. It had the shittiest kit lens, so I had to get the best “bang for the bucks” lens: the Canon 50mm ƒ1.8. An okay lens but a good IQ. That’s a win in my book.

But it wasn’t enough to quench my thirst for more IQ (obligatory zombie voice here, “braaaaaaaainnns”). I bought a Canon 5D Mk II and a Sigma 50mm ƒ1.4. The 5D is one fantastic piece of equipment. The photos are stellar, the IQ is nothing short of breathtaking and the bokeh produced by my setup was akin to some sweet swiss chocolate melting in my mouth in front of the fireplace on Christmas Eve.

I later bought a Canon 70-200mm ƒ4L and further revised my thinking. The idiom says that once you go ‘L’, you never go back. That’s true. Before the L, I regarded the Sigma as having great IQ, I now see it as only good since.

To cut a long story short, I have very high standards regarding image quality. I couldn’t imagine myself taking the great moments of my life with a shitty camera ever again. That’s something I’ve gotten from my father, I suppose.

Yet, I’ve noticed a significant decline in the number of photographs I’ve taken over the years. The better the image quality my setup could achieve, the fewer pictures I took. Now that I think of it, it isn’t the IQ: it’s the size. More IQ equals bigger setup. (And bigger is not always better, it’s what you do with it… What? WTF is this doing here?!)

My 5D and 70-200L weigh 1.51 kg (or 3.34 lbs). That’s a fucking truck I’m carrying each time I take this out of the bag. I went to Rome this summer and carried it throughout the city, from the Vatican all the way to the Coliseum, and further even. My arm felt numb at the end of the day. I even started wondering whether or not to take it the following days. That’s no good sign.

This winter, I’ve seen beautiful things I just wish I had my camera to grab a photograph of. Every time I just loathed I hadn’t my 5D with me. In the end, I just took most of my shots with my iPhone. Even those of my ski week-end with my friends.

It does a decent job, but the quality is sincerely lacking. I miss having those big-ass RAW files to fiddle with in post-prod. Yet, it fits in my pocket and I have it with me at all time. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t have my iPhone with me.

Sometimes I tell myself I just have to take my 5D with me in the morning, and that somehow I’ll have it with me when the time comes to grab a shot. But where do I keep my camera? Do I leave it in the car, or do I bring it with me in the office? That huge, bulky heavy ass of a camera? Yeah, right. Like I want to do that. I can’t imagine leaving my $3,000 gear in my $3,000 car. Nor can I imagine carrying that thing with me at the restaurant…

I’ve come to a point where I’m in a dead-end: I want the best IQ possible in the least cumbersome package possible. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. Right?

Yep, right. Meet the Sony RX1. (You should read that review by Andrew Kim. Seriously, go read it.) The size of a pocket camera, yet the performance of a flagship DSLR. That’s the shit.

There are many things that disappoint with this camera (mainly the fixed lens), but there are much more that please: dedicated hardware dials and rings, small form-factor, 24 megapixels, Carl Zeiss optics, etc.

This thing is a pure beauty, and I think it’s going to be a huge hit. I want to test one, maybe by leasing it. If it’s as good as I think it is, and as people say it is, I can see myself selling my 5D and all the lenses to get the Sony RX1.

My 5D could well be among the best cameras ever made, but if I don’t use it because it’s too fucking big, it has no worth to me.

“The best camera is the one that fits in your pocket.”