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When I was in art school I studied photo and found it really frustrating that the most successful photographers had all chosen a camera for themselves that they worked with almost all the time: for Ryan McGinley & Terry Richardson it was the Yashika T4, for Juergen Teller it was the Contax G2, Wolfgang Tillmans used a Leica with a 35mm lens. Something about this felt disingenuous and try as I might I could never find my version of that thing. It hasn’t been since I abandoned and rediscovered photography that I found that my first point-and-shoot digital camera - the 2005 Canon Powershot G7 - is mine. I adore this freaking thing and shoot all my portraits with it. You can get them usually for $50 on eBay, the flash is powerful, and it has a fantastic zoom. There’s also a really nice video feature that can handle low light and somehow translates colors in a way that feels “straight from the tube” - I’ve already shot a short film on it and want to make more videos with it soon.
Dec 21, 2021
Related Recs
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I’ve dabbled in photography for about 15 years and I’ve tried all kinds of film and digital cameras - as of late I have settled on these two.
The Canon is a surprisingly heavy duty point and shoot digi-cam. So far it’s the best balance of photo quality / features I could find in an early 2000s model. The batteries are rechargeable and still available to buy new, the flash recharges really fast and it has a full manual mode if you want to get more involved with settings etc. Only downside is these shoot compact flash which you will probably need to buy a dongle for. I’m sure you can find a model that shoots SD though!
The Nikon EM is about as basic as you can get with a manual focus SLR. The camera shoots aperture priority auto - meaning you can’t control the shutter speed, however there is a really easy to use built in light meter that beeps if you are at the risk of under or over exposing the image; this makes it really easy to consistently take good photos. Great starter film camera if that’s the route your going down.
With all this being said - the best camera is always whatever you can get your hands on! I have shot great photos on shit cameras and shit photos on great cameras. Ya never know what is going to work for you until you try it. Have fun.
Jan 8, 2025
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A great digital camera from the turn of the century. I love shooting film but it's so expensive, so I bought a Powershot for like $100 on eBay. You might have one in your childhood bedroom or your parent's computer desk.
Apr 18, 2024
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I’ve had the best luck with a couple different models of the canon powershot digital cameras! I think they’re great quality and they give that nostalgic look to photos that remind me of when I was a kid. Some have rechargeable batteries and some take double a batteries, you can definitely find one on eBay, depending on the model it might be more expensive than others. I bought myself an sd card reader that I can plug into my phone whenever I do want to upload my photos for printing or posting.
Jan 15, 2025
Top Recs from @asher-penn
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From what I can tell, artist Jeffrey Scudder is the only post-internet artist to figure out Tik-Tok, with his Whistelgraph project recently hitting 2 Million followers. Whistlegraphs are tiny songs that are performed through drawing, where the sonic and visual gestures synch up poetically - kind of like a haiku that you animate in real-time - that for the past two years have been performed in videos by Scudder alongside artists Camille Klein and Alex Freundlich. Pioneers in their own experimental artform, Whistlegraph seems to be channeling a lot of things at the same time - If I were to free-associate I’d say it feels spiritually connected to Brendan Fowler and Odwalla88 and Tori Kudo, but also Josh Smith and David O’Reilly and Susan Cianciolo - not that any of their devoted fans would know or care about that stuff. Their audience is predominantly between the ages of 8-17, and the most comprehensive interview with Whistlegraph to date was done by a 13-year-old superfan named Perry. Watching Perry perform “Butterfly Cosplayer” with glee makes me wonder if the current iteration of Whistlegraph is just the beginning and that the most exciting manifestations of this art form will be found in generations to come.
Dec 21, 2021
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Nymphet Alumni are a podcast devoted to analyzing the niche mainstream - cultural touchstones that didn’t necessarily die but instead morphed, rebranded, and shapeshifted into obsolescence, alongside contemporary trends that are almost too pervasive to identify. Sometimes these are brands (American Apparel, Oh Mighty), or platforms (Rookie, Tumblr), or social phenomena (Tik Tok Physiognomy, Nepotism Babies). Just because these subjects are massive in scale doesn’t make them easy to talk about, as the topics are so recent and fleeting that to subject them to thoughtful critical analysis feels too early or too late or just plain pointless- and maybe that’s the point. Listening to Alexi, Biz, and Sam’s compassionate and highly personal insights it’s clear that the ephemeral doesn’t arrive from - or exit into - the void.
Dec 21, 2021
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RIP to this absolute GOAT of a sobriety meme account. I think I stopped drinking around the time that sobriety memes were in their second wave - 12-step inside jokes that were ideally harrowing, embarrassing, and hopeful in their shared hopelessness - and while Brutal Recovery, Fucking Sober, and Dumbsoberbitch are great, no account could perform these lacerations with the expertise of a surgeon as @facebooksober. Like an elephant balancing itself on a dime, facebook sober managed to capture the divine paradox’s inherent to recovery with such aesthetic grace and poetry I was 100% convinced that the person behind the account was a hot girl (it was a dude, lol). Whatever. Hot Newcomers Are Forever.
Dec 21, 2021