I've been photographing for some 60 years, and I think it was about 40 years ago I first noticed that every single time that I had "upgraded" my camera to a more modern and "sophisticated" one, the quality of my seeing took a significant hit, until I relearned what was important to me.
I still frequently feel the lust for the newest and greatest, but the camera that behaves like a well-worn old shoe gives me the best results.
I may sometimes forget my great-grandchildrens' names, but I still clearly remember my very first camera upgrades: first from a double-stroke Leica M3 to single-stroke, a good upgrade, then to a post-1000000 serial-number M3, another good upgrade because some essential springs had been strengthened, and then to an M4, to me the best of the Leica Ms. Sure, I tried the M6 and the M7, but Leica was then into fiddling with the finders and adding TTL, etc, and somehow, the cameras were lesser choices, and as this poster suggests, the changes intruded upon my shooting. Of course, when digital came along, it was as though I had never held a camera before. Everything had to be relearned, but nothing since has given me the authority of my shooting as did those early Leicas. Would I go back to them and film? No, digital effectively burned those bridges for me, but in those melancholic moments of nostalgia, in a dark and smokey bar over a long-necked beer, I wonder....
