An interview with myself

Why would anyone switch off the thing that makes their photos better?

Because most of the time you do not have to switch anything off. You just switch off your own chance to decide, and accept what somebody else decided for you, somewhere between the sensor and the saved file.

But define better. I believe you lose the option to create something unique and new if you get rid of the chance to make a mistake or to fail.

Eleven cameras you decided not to buy. Really?

Yes, and I still have more than enough of them at home. My favorite is the Olympus Mju I, and the Minolta Dynax 9. But right now I want to take more photographs, and the phone is in my trouser pocket all the time, so being the handiest thing I own counts for something. I tried to make it feel close to shooting with a real camera.

Edit: I just bought the Nikon Coolpix P5100 and the Ricoh GX200, but I got them for a really good price from Japan and I will probably send them on to someone soon.

You mentioned you made lenses out of thrown away single use cameras. How are the two projects alike?

It feels very similar. In both of them I take something that long years of development made good (both mirrorless and smartphone cameras), and I deliberately steer it back towards a more analog experience. A lens out of a single use camera, with nothing on it to set, a fixed f/11, focusing on anything from one metre to infinity. And next to it an app that records the world the way it looks right now, with nothing drawn in and nothing guessed.

Which of the six films do you actually use?

Mono. I like shooting in black and white. Ordinary Plus lets you change the intensity of each recipe and put them in your own order, so I moved Mono to the front, set EV to -0.5 and made the grain a little bit more visible. It is the look the app opens with. Let me know what your favorite is.

You must have run into limits and bugs yourself. What is wrong with the app, or does not work the way you imagined?

It took me a long time to find a reliable way to confirm that the iPhone really is not stacking several frames together. A lot of the systems are wired into each other, so switching one thing on changes the way something else behaves. I turned on Bayer RAW and lost the quick zoom between the lenses.

Ordinary Camera 1.0 as it stands is a compromise between how I wanted the app to work and what was actually possible. We will see what the next versions bring. I am looking forward to trying manual aperture on the iPhone 18.

I have to ask: will you ever add the selfie camera?

What tempts me more right now is a properly thought out macro mode, or more experiments in Ordinary Plus. I thought of Plus as my playground, a place for things an ordinary user does not need, but which might interest people who like trying new things, or who decided to support me. I will probably let my users vote on future features.

How do you get feedback, so you know what people actually want?

The selfie camera came up in a review on the App Store, but I got very lucky: I put out a beta fairly early and a lot of people wrote to me about it directly, or in messages on Instagram. I ask all of them to keep writing. Feedback matters to me enormously.

Is there anything you need help with?

This is a project made by a single person who loves design and loves to make things. My struggle is very obvious: I am not very good at marketing. If you know someone who would benefit from this app or enjoy using it, please spread the word. That is the nicest thing and probably the most helpful at the moment.

The best motivation to continue is seeing how people use the thing you make. It was true of the lenses and it is true of this app. Share your pictures and mention @ordinary.camera on Instagram. It would be my pleasure to share them with my slowly growing audience as well.