THE SHUTTER JUST KEPT SPINNING

The shutter on my Nikon L35AF stops working. I put in new batteries and the whole thing just keeps spinning, like it’s trying to wind itself back to life. That camera had been my grab-it-on-the-way-out point-and-shoot for years — simple, no thinking required. Now it’s dead.

I don’t go looking for a replacement right away, first I tried to get it fixed. I’d poked around rangefinders before and could never land on one. A Canon AE-1 Program kept coming up in my searches, but it always felt like more camera than I actually needed — more dials, more decisions, more ways to get it wrong.

Then, right place right time, an Olympus 35RC shows up in a Facebook group for EDC enthusiasts. Small, simple, a rangefinder patch instead of autofocus. I buy it without much more thought than that.

I just got the first roll back. Thirty-nine frames, and you can watch me learn the camera in real time — a few blown-out close-ups from the first minutes, some camera shake from shooting indoors without a flash, one frame where my own neck strap drifted into shot. Then I get outside into daylight and start trusting the rangefinder patch instead of guessing, and the good stuff shows up: a Ferrari wheel, a fire hydrant, a subway entrance, sharp and warm and exactly what I wanted.

Here’s what’s stuck with me more than any single frame. Shooting film forces a diligence my phone never asks for. I have thousands of photos on my phone and couldn’t tell you what’s on most of them. With the 35RC I get thirty-six frames and no screen to check my work. I have to actually look through the viewfinder, line up the rangefinder patch, decide the shot is worth one of thirty-six before I press the shutter. It’s slower. It’s also the first time in years I’ve felt like I was looking at something instead of just pointing a camera at it.

Zeke’s fascinated by the whole thing — less the camera itself than the waiting. He likes knowing how things work, and this is the first camera he’s seen that doesn’t show him the picture right away. He keeps asking when the roll will be done. We watched a YouTube video about film development and I am still not totally sure if he gets it.

One of the best parts of the camera is having an excuse to just take a slow walk and notice whats around me.

— All the images in this post were shot by me on an Olympus 35RC.