Three Cameras, One Roll of Film

People always ask me what to shoot on so here's the honest answer — told through the three cameras that actually shaped how I see, in the order I owned them.

The Olympus mju-II — the one that taught me

My first camera. It's a tiny clamshell point-and-shoot with a fixed 35mm f/2.8 lens, and there's a reason it's a cult object: for something that fits in a jacket pocket, the glass is genuinely sharp.

What it gave me was permission. There are no decisions to make on a mju-II — you point, it decides, you're done. So I shot constantly, badly, and often. That's the only way you get good.

Its flaws are real, though. The flash resets to auto every time you power it on, which means it will absolutely fire in the middle of a quiet moment you were trying not to interrupt. And at f/2.8 with a fully automatic brain, low light is a coin toss.

The Nikon Lite·Touch Zoom 150ED — the detour

I wanted reach, so I moved to the Nikon. It's a 38–150mm zoom with ED glass, and on paper that's a lot of camera in a small body.

In practice, it taught me the most useful lesson I've learned about gear: a zoom costs you light. The maximum aperture narrows sharply as you zoom in, and by the long end you need a genuinely bright room to get a clean frame. Indoors, at night, at a party — which is where I actually live — I was fighting it constantly.

I don't regret it. It made me understand why fast primes cost what they cost.

The Contax T3 — going all in

Then I saved up and went all in.

The T3 has a Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 35mm f/2.8 in a titanium body the size of a deck of cards, and the difference is immediate. It's sharper corner to corner. It handles contrast without blowing out a highlight the second someone steps under a light. And critically, it gives me control — aperture priority, exposure compensation, the ability to turn the flash off and keep it off.

That last part matters more than any spec. The candid frames I care about are the ones nobody noticed me taking, and a camera that announces itself with a flash can't get them.

If you're starting today: a mju-II and a few rolls of UltraMax 400. Don't overthink the rest.