By 2016 my DSLR camera had stopped accompanying me on my travel. It was heavy, and taking pictures on it seemed pointless because the time spent making sure I had the right settings for focus, aperture and shutter speed were wearing me down. The phone camera seemed to just…calculate it all on its own and produce a quick, pleasant picture. I still fished out the DSLR for “special occasions” – including a friend’s engagement – but by the time I got to the same friend’s wedding with the camera a few months later, its battery started showing an error. The camera went into the cupboard. During the lockdowns, I’d pick it up occasionally to check whether the battery somehow magically fixed itself – of course it didn’t.
Despite the DSLR sleeping for months together, I harboured a secret wish to click amazing portraits and bokeh shots with a 35mm f1.8 lens. I’d borrowed it a couple of times years ago and enjoyed using it to click portraits at events. Priced at a grand 18 grand, it was more than I wanted to spend on an aging camera, but finally, a few weeks ago, I decided to test the waters, and armed with the camera body, the kit lens, and the dead battery, I went to Chandni Chowk, to Kuccha Chowdhry market, famous for its camera shops selling all kinds of second-hand accessories.
What a treat it was! Row after row of shops selling old cameras – including the likes of my own, not just film cameras – and lenses and accessories and what not. Many were closed, but the ones open were often tiny stalls, wide enough to only seat one person behind the glass cabinet stocking all sorts of camera thingies. There were shops stuffed into tiny lanes littered with plastic; at one point I even got hit by a plastic tea cup that a shopkeeper flung from inside in style (I only got an excuse of an apology from him). I soldiered on, climbing tiny staircases in old, crumbly buildings; stooping to enter mezzanine floors stuffed with even more shops; stopping to stare at dismembered camera parts stacked in a repair shop; and getting caught staring through the glass window at a bunch of people repairing cameras.
I stopped at a shop to buy a replacement battery. I naively asked for a warranty. The shopkeeper waved me away. I then tested a 35mm lens they had – second hand, of course, with a smudge on the lens that didn’t turn up on the test pictures – and my heart fluttered. Memories resurfaced of me trying hard to achieve the same effect with my kit lens (18-55mm), which meant going dangerously close to the subject, annoyingly close if it was a human.
The price, even for a second-hand item, was more than I was willing to spend. I spent the next half hour going into every other shop first asking for the lens and then its price, which only seemed to increase with each shop. Feeling a little defeated, I sat down on a bench on the crowded market road and took a few deep breaths. I had anticipated this. I wondered if it was about the money, but quickly realised it was more about whether it made sense to buy an accessory for a product that I used sparsely. It would only add to the clutter. I remembered the irritation that came with lugging the camera around on its last international trip, the memory of the camera slung around my neck even as I fished out my phone to click a picture.
And most importantly, what did I want to do with the photos? Asking myself that question sitting in Chandni Chowk, I realised I had no answer; I was uninterested in sharing them with anyone, anywhere. I barely did that with photos clicked on the phone; with the camera requiring extra work to transfer, edit, refine – forget it. I couldn’t convince myself that I wanted to click pictures for myself. I did enjoy that at some point, when photos didn’t stare at me in the face every single day from across my networks of friends and family, from social media. I did enjoy it when every meeting and everything worth savouring was not immediately a picture.
My heart fell the moment I registered this. I had let other things lessen the inherent joy I had once found in photography. Life, well, growing up had taken over and imparted cynicism, expecting “value” in everything – the photos had to be good; the photos had to be used somewhere; otherwise they may as well not be taken.
I’ve never been a “good” photographer, despite trying hard in the early days. I bought the camera in 2009 as a precious birthday gift to myself, after convincing myself that I’d earned enough to indulge in one. In 2011, before a much-awaited trip to Greece, I signed up with the Singapore Photography Society for a month-long photography class, with the hope of making the most of the beautiful places I was going to visit. I learnt the basics, but my pictures were mediocre; looking back, I realise I didn’t have the patience to test out multiple angles, frame shots, or play around with the settings. I had had that patience in my college years, and had thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with a 2 MP digital camera, which was what had given me the dream of buying a DSLR in the first place. By the time I turned 24, this patience had already worn out.
I still remember the thrill of buying the camera. I think the reason I got a Nikon was because my hand-me-down digital camera from my sister was a Nikon, and there didn’t seem to be any research telling me Nikon was better or worse than Canon, so sentiment won. How I decided on the D5000, I don’t remember – possibly the budget range. I was at Mustafa in Singapore, an evening after finishing work, if I remember correctly. After checking out a few models, I finalised the D5000. Only the standard 18-55 kit lens, nothing more. The shopkeeper threw in, as a freebie, a large black camera bag with “Nikon” stitched in white. It had many pockets to store lenses and accessories. I was so pleased. I felt so “pro”.
Back to that evening in 2022. I returned from Chandni Chowk with only the replacement battery, as one last attempt at reviving my interest.
P.S.: Found VK’s macro lens during my last trip to Chennai. So these pictures, taken after I got the new battery, were to test what the lens can do. I clicked them when it was raining, sitting on my haunches in the balcony, one hand shielding the camera from the rain, the other precariously holding the camera and trying to keep it steady for the shot. A few minutes of fun!
