Deciding which cameras to take on a trip or a day out is something I think about very carefully. Sometimes it’s the huge Contax 645, with my Sony A7 for digital; other times it’s the Sony plus a Leica for black-and-white. As I’ve written before, it depends on the circumstances. But this isn’t quite the whole story. I have one other camera that I sometimes throw into my bag. I think of it as a secret, bonus camera, a stowaway that sometimes comes along for the ride. It’s a Contax T3, a tiny point-and-shoot film camera with an amazingly good Zeiss lens. It’s easy to use, with very few controls, and you’d never believe such a tiny camera could take such sharp pictures. When I meet up with other photographers it always seems to be the camera they swoon over!

It’s not always with me, and I don’t always get it out even when it is. So what I shoot with it ends up being pretty random, and often covers a period of several months. But that’s what I love about it. Snapping away with the T3 takes me back to a simpler time when I didn’t take photography quite so seriously. And the best thing about it is that when I send off a roll of film to be processed, I’m never quite sure what I’ll get back. It’s a random assortment of images that complement the pictures I took with my other cameras over the previous months: a bonus set of photos from a slightly different perspective. These are some of my pictures from the latest roll taken during this summer.

kirstin