The camera that vanished in the hand.

The best photo of my life I took on a Monday night, at a terrace in Chișinău, after the second bottle of wine. Not in a studio, not with lights, not preparing anything. And what struck me isn't that I took it - it's that, the same night, so did the boys. People who never hold a camera, who never went to photography school, and who couldn't believe what they were seeing on the screen.

But let me start at the beginning. Or rather, with the circle that closed after thirteen years.

The longing

Around 2012 I had a Canon 5D Mark II and a small studio where my team shot stock photos. It was revolutionary back then - full-frame, you could film in low light, everything felt like the future. Then I sold or gave away nearly all the gear. And ever since, a quiet longing stayed with me: to own a full-frame camera again. Not for money, not for work. Simply for myself.

That longing sat there for thirteen years. And the thing I feared most was a single feeling - the one from the 5D Mark II, when you've spent three thousand dollars on a body and you hold it in your hand unable to take a beautiful photo, because it's too complicated to set up. Rarely a greater frustration. The expensive camera that makes you feel stupid.

Why Sony (and why it's personal)

I'll be honest: I'm biased. I have enormous respect for this corporation and for Japanese culture as a whole. And it goes back a long way.

I remember how around 1998, from the shop on Sarmizegetusa street, next to Ionel, my parents bought the first little Sony TV, a VHS, then an 8mm camcorder. What a revolution it was back then to be able to film with such a small device. I caught my great-grandfather on tape, and my high-school years too.

And I had, I don't even remember from where, a Sony tech journal - from the days of minidiscs and analog. During summer holidays at my grandparents' I leafed through it to see what marvels were being made somewhere, on the other side of the world. That catalog was an immersive experience. It made me imagine the lives of people who own such technology at home.

Around 2003 I wrote a whole paper about the Sony corporation and its corporate culture, for a semester project at ASE Bucharest. And on mIRC my alias was Mr_Sony_. So yes - biased, at the very least, you'd say.

The choice

This time I wanted a compact camera. One you always have within reach, not a burden you leave at home. I studied - Sony, Canon, Nikon. And I chose the Sony a7C II: full-frame, a quality sensor (that's the first thing you ask of a body), compact enough to shoot anytime, with a great lens ecosystem and friendly to beginners. I went body-only, with a 35mm f1.8 prime - no zoom. I was initially thinking 50mm, but Ricky recommended 35mm. He was right.

An aside I couldn't ignore: there are very few serious sensor makers in the world, and Sony dominates by a wide margin. Even Nikon, which bought RED and has its own color science, uses Sony sensors. So do Fujifilm, Hasselblad on medium format, partly Leica. Not to mention that inside Google Pixel and iPhone - Sony sensors too. It amused me enormously.

The miracle: point and shoot

After the scare that I'd just bought it and the battery wouldn't charge (Sony Moldova told me to use a charger that isn't fast-charging, so it doesn't go into protection mode - and that fixed it), the miracle happened. I took the first frames, pure point-and-shoot, without thinking about anything. And they were fantastic. Out of the box. The camera understands on its own what's happening in the frame and where to focus, and you think about composition, not about ISO, aperture, shutter speed.

The fear from the 5D Mark II - gone.

The night

So I brought it to Boys' Night. The boys joked, naturally: you'd have been better off with a Pixel half the price and the same result - and I have a Pixel anyway. I tried to explain what ISO is, depth of field, bokeh, shutter speed. After the second bottle of wine, I lost them to the technical terms.

And then something happened. We downloaded the photos straight to the phone, looked at them enlarged - and that was it. No more need for any argument, any theory. The images did the talking.

More than that: the fear disappeared too. The boys took the camera and started shooting themselves. They couldn't believe their eyes. Then they began photographing other people, out of pure curiosity - to see how what they saw in real life would come out in a photo. And it was already quite dark.

The revelation

At a table nearby there were some medical students celebrating something. Our boys took a few photos of them - frames that captured the emotion of the moment, the kind of images you can't make in a studio and that don't repeat. If they aren't immortalized in that second, they're lost forever. (They themselves asked us to send them the photos - and we did.)

There was also a moment of pure comedy. At yet another table, two girls - one taking photos of the other with the flash on, in auto. Someone of ours suggested she try without the flash, for nicer bokeh, and showed her how it looks on our camera - with depth, with lights melting in the window behind. And the funniest part: she didn't like it without the flash. With all the bokeh in the world.

By the way, Ricky - a photographer with over 20 years of experience - has the explanation for what happened there. It's been a trend for a while, born out of the hype around the Canon G7X Mark III: lots of bloggers shoot with flash at sunrise and sunset, and it really does look fine, so people came to believe that any frame from that camera turns out "wow". In truth it's simpler than that - with flash and a few settings, you can recreate that atmosphere on almost any camera. It's not about bokeh, it's about flash light. (Ricky says he shot his demo photos on a Fujifilm, on purpose, to show someone the effect has nothing to do with the Canon.)

And here's the whole moral, really. The camera can give you separation, depth, light. But what moves you stays a matter of the human, not the technology. "Better" doesn't automatically mean "what people want".

Whose credit is it

I, at least, took the best photo of my life that night (it's the one at the top, not the one below) - in my own subjective opinion. And I understood something: the barrier between human and technology has to disappear, so you can both savor the moment and immortalize it effortlessly. Then the camera becomes invisible, and only what you saw remains.

So, whose credit is it? Clearly, Sony's first - for making it. Then the one who appreciates, buys and uses it. But the greatest credit belongs to the people who lived those moments the photo merely witnesses. The best photos were taken by beginners, and the result is impossible to replicate. Because the camera didn't make that night. We did.

Cheers. ★