Why I love my junk camera and continue to use it

"My name is Vigolette old. I am a dwarf. I'm eight centimetres tall and made of rubber. I once had a round metal thing at the back, about the small of my back, and when someone, a human with his gigantic powers, pressed on my rubber belly, it whistled. I whistled. But the metal thing has long since fallen off me and I no longer whistle. People - especially people's children - think I'm a toy. A toy gnome. They're right, but they only know half the truth."

This is how Urs Widmer's novel "A Life as a Dwarf" begins. The dwarf accompanies his owner from childhood to old age. At first, he plays with him and later takes him travelling with him in his pocket. At some point he comes to rest, the dwarf stands on the shelf and watches the narrator typing on the keyboard. Both grow older and frailer.

Play dwarf and travelling companion

My dwarf is the Sony RX100 III. It's only been with me for five years, but that's a long time for a compact camera. It already has more signs of wear and tear than I do.

We've been on countless hikes, walks and excursions together, on Corsica, in Strasbourg, Dijon, Nuremberg and Lisbon, on an eight-day bike tour in Germany, on the Canary Islands, drunk at the bowling alley and sober in a Catalan nature reserve. Whether it was a thunderstorm with hail or 38 degrees in the shade, she was and is the companion responsible for my memories.

Over the course of this year, the camera became increasingly frail. The housing is bent. That's why the viewfinder no longer pops out, but I have to pull it out. The louvres of the lens no longer open fully either. I have to tap the camera on my hand every time I switch it on to get them to release. The screen has lost its anti-reflective coating and I can hardly see anything in sunlight. And the rubber covers that were supposed to protect the ports are also gone.

In spite of this, I use the camera more than ever before. I have already considered replacing it. But if I were to buy the newest version of the RX100, I'd always be afraid of breaking it. I'm not worried about this camera because it's already broken.

But even more important is the good feeling of defying decay.

We've still got it

This year, I've already taken some good pictures with the RX100. And I'm particularly pleased that I managed to take them with such a wreck of a camera.

Handling all the broken parts is tedious, but after all these years I know exactly how to get the best out of the device. For example, I know that the lens is crisp at wide-angle, but not so much at telephoto. So I take landscape shots at wide angle as often as possible.

But these are just rationalisations; it's actually a purely emotional thing. I like this camera because over time it has become my camera. In the beginning it was a mass product, now it's unique. It only exists once in this form.

When I was young, I had no such feelings. Old junk was just old junk - get rid of it. Today, I find it comforting to think that it still goes on. Sometimes even surprisingly well.

But of course, it won't go on forever. At some point it will end. Perhaps the camera will then sit on the shelf like Urs Widmer's dwarf. As a reminder of all the wonderful memories. <p