Riley’s camera is older than she is. It makes a nice change in a world in which most of us are worried about our cameras going out-of-date and us getting behind the times. It’s a very fine camera too – an Olympus OM-2N. Somehow though I’m not sure it would have made much difference which camera 31-year-old Millie had chosen from Xingguang Photographic Equipment City – her pictures would still be really beautiful. While some cameras are just tools, others that change the way we feel actually do have an influence on the way we shoot – and I suspect Millie’s gorgeous Olympus is one of those cameras.
ted‘My boyfriend and I moved to China right before Covid,’ Millie says, ‘and during the pandemic I wasn’t working, so I needed something to do. I’d always quite liked photography so I decided I should take it up. I did some research into beginner cameras and liked the sound of the OM-2N as it has a good light meter. I reckoned that focusing on its own would be enough of a challenge so if the camera could take care of the metering that would be very useful. In Shanghai there’s what we’d call a shopping centre that is just camera stores. It’s five stories high! On the ground floor they have shops that sell new-fangled equipment and the second floor is devo to shops that sell and develop film,
