Shooting without a viewfinder is a great way of taking photos. I used to use a Minox 35 ML, the so called "spy camera": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minox_35#/

Shooting without a viewfinder is a great way of taking photos. I used to use a Minox 35 ML, the so called "spy camera": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minox_35#/media/File:Minox35ml.jpg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minox_35#/media/File:Minox35ml... It's very small, if not the smallest 35mm camera out there, which makes it inconspicuous. Also it only has zone-focusing, which means you have to guess how far your subject is away from you. You'd only use the viewfinder for framing and setting your exposure. However, since I also used the flash, the exposure was fixed anyways. I usually put a roll of Portra 400 in, which I pushed to 800. All that allowed me to stop down the lens quite a bit, so I knew that everything in around 1.5 to 15 meters distance would be in focus when I press the shutter. And I didn't worry about the framing, so I didn't use the viewfinder. This gave me an instantaneous access to situations and pictures that otherwise would've been long gone after looking into the viewfinder and setting the focus and exposure. I didn't worry much about how I held the camera and just used my intuition. It really was a kind of liberating way to create images. So yeah, the camera does matter! Although I think I only paid around $100 for this one. Those are a couple images I took in Paris that way: * https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/paris/paris-2.jpg https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/paris/paris-2.jpg * https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/paris/paris-3.jpg https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/paris/paris-3.jpg * https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/paris/paris-4.jpg https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/paris/paris-4.jpg And one I took in Cologne: https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/cologne-man-with-dog.jpg https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/cologne-man-with-...