2010. The second decade of the new millennium. By now we’re supposed to be flying in cars, have robots doing our cooking and be able to control our entire homes with one remote control. Granted, we’ve come along way towards some of those goals, but with each leap in technology a certain part of us yearns for the simpler times of the  1900’s.

We have the tech to send music to any computer wirelessly and download any song that pops in our head from our phones, but why are vinyl records making a comeback? We can buy a 12-megapixel camera at the mall for $200 or less, but we sill shoot film and play with chemicals. The further we come, the more we miss what we used to take for granted.

And somewhere along the line, the cameras that were built for utility have become toys to us.

But when did the camera become a toy? At what point did we look at that medium format Holga, that Mr. Lee so graciously made so that everyone would be able to afford to take pictures and say, ‘this is now a toy camera.’ What was once a tool for the masses is now a toy for the few.

Photography has never been about technology. Do painters not sill use a brush made from the same horsehair that Monet did? Yes. They have paint made of the same ingredients that they always have- and has painting gotten better? I remember when I moved from my Nikormat to my F4s, and thought ‘this is what I should have always had.’ But did my images change at all? Not really. The exposures were better, maybe autofocus helped a bit. But I was not a better photographer. Then my F5 came along, and I thought ‘ah, this matrix meter will change everything.’ It didn’t. In fact to this day I think the F4s was the best Nikon ever. Was it the most advanced? No, but it felt so much better in my hands that I used it more then the F5. Again, my photos looked no different.

Sometime along that path, I picked up a Yashika 124g, moved on to 120 film and thought ‘ah, bigger negative, better images.’ No, not really- but one thing did happen. It slowed me down while I was shooting, and make me concentrate not on the tech, but the image. I have been progressing back to lower tech cameras ever since.

My first Holga changed that even more- now I was not only less worried about tech, but I was having fun, and finally my images got better. My experience with all the 35’s had given me a very strong sense of exposure and how to shoot certain films. With the Holga I was not relying on super ultra mega matrix metering, but simply my eyes. Bright day? Shoot 100. Cloudy day? 200 or 400. I was metering with the film and not worrying about having the best prime lens or 8 frames a second.

So then, was that a toy? Or was that just a better tool for what I wanted to create? How much has the hammer changed in hundreds of years? Not much, it sill is a metal thing that you can smack the crap out of a nail with. Light has not changed the way it hits film for billions of years. You open up a shutter, it comes in, mixes up with some Silver and you get a negative. That’s it. Today I have a big compressor and a nail gun, and yes, I can put together wood things much faster. I have an iPhone and I can use it to find my way to anywhere in the world, find a good sushi restaurant and make reservations all with a few swipes of my finger. This new 27-inch iMac is faster then my old G5. Some tech is good, but we can’t let tech create an image for us.

Let’s take a few examples. Would buying the best golf clubs in the world make me as good as Tiger Woods? No. I am rubbish at golf regardless of what club I swing. I would be more along the par of his Wife, at least she could hit a truck with big Bertha. Would buying an AMG C63 make me as fast around a track as Michael Schumacher? No. I have raced plenty of different cars, but I am still just an average driver. Holding a Leica is like being behind the wheel of a Rolls Royce Phantom, but as we proved in our test, it’s not going to give you the vision of Salgado.

When I went to the US Grand Prix to see Schumacher’s last run in the big Ferrari V-10, I went back and forth on what camera to bring. In then end, all I took was a Holga. I wanted to have fun, and not worry about lugging around all that equipment for three days in the blistering heat. Do I look back and think I made a mistake? No. I got an image that I think summed the whole weekend up. One shot, from a Holga.

I was recently at a wedding, and I had a Blackbird, Fly with me. As all of you know, at weddings there is always ‘that guy’ who bought some high tech Nikon and thinks he is now a pro photographer. He asked me what I was shooting with, and I explained to him as best I could that it was a toy camera. A plastic, colorful, film shooting toy camera. His response was the usual smug that I get from those weekend warrior photographers. After he explained to me all about megapixels and ultrasonic autofocus, and blah, blah, I simply said, “it’s not the camera, Sir, it’s the person holding it.’

It was a Toy Camera, and the one that I think really changed the game over the last year. It wasn’t conceived as a utility camera for the masses like the Diana, LC –A or Holga. It was designed to simply be a fun camera, one that combines the slow-you-down of a TLR with the economy of 35mm film. And just like the F4s, it’s beautiful. Nikon decided after the brick of an F3, that they wanted a camera that would feel nice and balanced in your hand- that had flowing lines like an Italian sports car. Coincidence? No, they called again on Giorgetto Giugiaro. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he designed some of the most beautiful cars ever to grace the road. The Ferrari 250 GTO, The Lotus Esprit, Ducati’s, Maserati’s and more. You know the feeling you got the first time you saw a Ferrari? That’s the feeling I got when I saw the prototype of the Blackbird, Fly.

Sure, there have been other toy cameras before and since, but how many were designed to be a toy from the start? When did the camera become a toy? For me it was the day I got my Orange Blackbird in the mail. A clean slate design, a low-fi lens and exposure system, something that I would want to shoot with just to play with. It was about the same time that I started FourCornersDark, and was one of the first cameras that I reviewed. Has it made me a better photographer? No, but I sure have a lot more fun shooting with it then I did that clunky F3.

It’s 2010. It’s the future. Camera forums will debate which system is best just like they did last year and the year before. Nikon v. Canon. 12 v. 16 megapixels. Prime v. Zoom lenses. In the end, does any of it really matter? Not to us, because we see past all that tech and simply have fun. The result? Cameras to us are now toys. As far as we have come, we’ll always be happy to go back. While all those so called pro’s bicker about what tool will give you the best image, we all know that it’s the person holding the camera that makes the image.