But no Mexican radio.

Where to look among the garbage and the flowers? Simone explores the question today. When you read the camera review sites, they go into mind-numbing detail about how well the cameras resolve resolution charts, how much noise they have, how well-placed the tripod mount is, how long they keep their battery charges for. We see stunning landscape prints or portraits and lust after the cameras and lenses that helped produce those photographs.

But we’re missing the point. Because it’s the photographs that matter in the end, and what does it matter if you’ve got a $12,000 camera and another $30,000 in lenses boxed up ready to go, but you hardly ever take them out because they’re too heavy. Or too precious.

Two of Robert Capa’s most famous photographs are technically imperfect. They’re not tack-sharp. The subjects are almost centred. One, the D-Day landing, is so blurred you might not recognise the subject if you didn’t know him v well. But that photograph has represented D-Day since then. You can’t see the detail in the rifle stock of the dead or v nearly dead Spanish loyalist. But Capa got the photographs.

The puny camera of mine that Simone refers to is a Sony DSC-U20, a tiny 2MP pocket camera. It has a fixed lens. It’s only 2MP – and Sony compresses the hell out of the images so you lose lots of detail. The LCD is so small that you can’t tell whether the photograph is any good – you can tell only that, yes, you recorded a photograph. Whenever I pull it out people laugh at it and dismiss it as a toy. And it surely frustrates me as a camera. See above. But it’s always in my pocket, and all of the photographs above I would not have taken if I didn’t have it. And those are some of my favourite photographs from the last year. Each one is technically imperfect, and the one of the acid pram is right dodgy. If I had the SD10 I lust after, I would have gotten far superior photographs. Or would I? I picked the ones above because I know I didn’t intend to take photographs when I headed out. But I had the puny Sony. Just in case.

And that is point of cameras. To take photographs of what you see, of what stands out, of what begs to have its photograph taken. The right camera is simply the one you have with you, even if it’s a joke when compared with the latest gear from Japan or Germany. The perfect photograph is simply the one you’ve taken.

Emese yesterday took some stunning sunset photographs. Or the day before yesterday. But yesterday, when the sunset was even more spectacular, she didn’t have her camera with her. (She uses a big, heavy Canon 10D.) But if she had a pocket camera with her, would it have done the sunset justice? It’s like hypnotising chickens. You don’t know.

So each time I scan the shop site to see if they’ve posted the release date for the SD10, I remind myself that it’s not the gear that’s important. (I don’t have the money for it anyway.) It’s that you have a camera with you all the time. And that you use it. Those marvels of technology are v expensive. They’re also huge, which means you won’t always have it with you. And who knows? You might miss the the photograph.

But I may be wrong.

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