The Camera Is A Portal

A non-review of the Nikon Zf

Camera reviews are stupid.

“Look at this camera! It’s so pretty. Buy one from my affiliate link.”

It’s all crap.

Me and many others in the camera world devolve into capitalistic animals bent on making money on your fears, hopes and dreams. Look at these great photos, click my Amazon link, and you can be like me.

Buying a camera = buying happiness.

What a joke.

So I don’t want this to be about the Zf… not really. I have no affiliate links for you to click.

The Zf was by far my least-used camera during the time I had it… yet it has some photographs that stand out.

Cameras are like musical instruments. They can be cheap, expensive, big and small, loud and quiet and come in a million variations.

They all make music, but sometimes, one captures a certain frequency in just a sliver of a different way. Call it a vibration, or a connection to the universe that, in the hands of a certain person who’s tuned to that frequency, can make good things happen.

That reminds me of my time with the Nikon Zf. It was tuned exactly for the moment in time I had it.

I barely remember using the camera. More often than not, using the brass manual control dials and retro lenses brought me into a flow state. It wasn’t me using the camera to take a photograph, it was me experiencing the world in a certain state of mind.

Here is a picture I took in late 2024. There’s a longing here, a question: were things better “back then?” This could have been taken in the 70’s and it probably looked exactly the same (maybe without such an emphasis on the WILD RICE sale though).

I came to realize as I spent time looking at more and more photos that I’m not taking photos of the things I see. The Zf isn’t just documenting what’s in front of me.

Instead, the camera is a portal.

Here, I heard the sounds of laughter coming from the trees, and I walked for miles until I found this place.

It felt sad here, like something significant had been lost. (It’s me… I’m the thing that’s lost.)

I kept going, finding slivers of other worlds.

Here, I could imagine a child, wandering through the Nebraska plains until they found this place, tired, but too afraid of the darkness and silence to go inside. (It’s me - I’m afraid of the silence. I’m afraid of the dark.)

I took the Nikon Zf to places that are hard to believe were ever real. This scene reminds me of the slowness of time people used to experience when things were simpler. (How did I let myself become who I’ve become? Were things always going to be like this?)

Maybe none of these places were ever really real. (Am I?)

Maybe photography is just memories of places that never existed.

The Nikon Zf is just a stupid camera.

The real portal is inside of me. (and you)

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