I impulse bought a camera

carson.sh

Carson Graham

2026-05-14

Photos from May 11th, 2026

I bought a Canon EOS RP + an EF 24-105mm f/3.5-5.6 off of craigslist because I was tired of not owning a camera.

I was looking for something that vaguely met these criteria

Packable/lightweight
- Mirrorless is the only thing that makes sense here
- Prime lenses are easier to get shorter?
EVF that works with glasses
Hand grip (which rules out most things smaller)
If I was going to buy a prime lens, more MP -> greater cropping ability?

So this does pretty well! As a bonus, it's made in the last decade.

I'm going to trade the lens in for a 50mm prime once I get around to it. People on the internet say the Canon 50mm RF f/1.8 is a quality lens for not being expensive, and it's also 40mm long (packable!). This is why most of these shots are at 50mm, or 50mm then cropped, as opposed to using the zoom lense I have.

These are all shot in cRAW + very light editing, mostly chromatic aberration and lense correction with a bit of deviation from the default colormap, exported as jpeg. Next time I'll remember to export as webp.

After taking these shots, the thing that is going to make me sad about running a 50mm prime is definitely birds. Tragic. At least the city birds are harder to scare.