I am sitting in Canada with no camera in my hand and I want to talk about a camera that is not with me. I left the Bronica S2A at home when I came over here, partly because it is heavy and takes up a lot of space, partly because the cameras I brought are the ones I am supposed to be reviewing for the channel. It was the right practical decision and I have been quietly regretting it for weeks.
I am missing it more than I expected to. So I went back and watched some old footage from a family holiday in Cornwall last summer, when the S2A was with me, and decided to put together an appreciation. Not a review. I do not need to review the S2A. I have owned one for around seven years and I know exactly what I think of it. This is a love letter.
A camera I do not need to be sensible about
You will know from other articles on this site that I try to be pragmatic about cameras. I have a Mamiya RB67 review that talks about a great camera I am selling because the population is in rough condition. I have a Rolleiflex 6006 piece about a great camera I am selling because I do not trust the long-term electronics. I am willing to sell cameras I genuinely admire if I cannot justify keeping them.
The Bronica S2A is the one I cannot be sensible about. I do not get gooey about cameras as a rule, but the S2A has earned its way through that defence. It is staying. Whatever happens with the rest of the kit, the S2A is not going on eBay.
I owe you an explanation for why.
The case for the S2A in practical terms
Briefly, because this is not what the article is about, but for anyone who has not encountered the S2A: it is a Japanese medium format SLR, 6x6 on 120 film, with a focal-plane shutter in the body and Nikkor lenses without their own shutters. Modular system with interchangeable lenses, backs and finders. Built like an absolute tank. Released originally in 1969. Mine is now around 55 years old and it still works exactly as it should.
The S2A sits in the same broad category as the Hasselblad 500C/M, which is more or less the most famous medium format SLR ever made and which I have written about elsewhere. The S2A is the underdog. Heavier, less elegant, made in smaller numbers, less respected by collectors. The lenses are different. The build is different. The whole feel is different.
That is exactly why I love it.
The underdog reasoning
I said this in the Hasselblad piece and it is worth repeating here, because the same psychology applies. I am not drawn to the top-of-the-table team. I am drawn to the lower-mid-table side. The Hasselblad is the camera with all the trophies and all the fans. The S2A is the one nobody is rooting for except a small group of people who shoot one and know what they have.
Being able to take a good photograph with the S2A feels, to me, more rewarding than taking the same photograph with a Hasselblad, because the S2A is supposed to make things harder. It does not, particularly, but its reputation does, and the photograph comes back twice as satisfying as a result.
That is not a defensible position. It is just my position. Other people are entitled to love their Hasselblads and they probably should.
What the Cornwall footage reminded me of
Watching the old footage from the family holiday, here is what I was struck by.
The S2A came with us everywhere. It was on the canal walk at 7am with my daughter as my “assistant” for the morning. It was in town for the buildings. It was on the beach for the family shots. It was in the camera bag the whole holiday, getting used most days, not stored away as a precious thing.
It produced ordinary good photographs. Not portfolio pieces. Family snapshots. Wide shots of children running into the sea. A self-portrait of me and my daughter. The dog moving too fast to ever be in focus. The kind of frames you take when the camera is so familiar that you do not think about it, you just photograph what is in front of you.
The lenses I used were the standard set. The 50mm wide for landscapes and family wides, the 75mm normal for general use, the 150mm with the Bronica doubler for the longer reach. No exotic glass. Just the kit lenses doing their job.
The films were nothing special. Lomography Color 400 in some rolls, FP4 in others. Whatever was loaded and to hand. The S2A is not a camera that demands precious film. It will happily handle whatever you point at it.
![PLACEHOLDER: a frame from the Cornwall holiday showing the family on the beach, casual and unposed]
Why the S2A is family
There is a thing some cameras do where they become invisible. You stop thinking about the mechanics. The advance lever, the meter, the focus, all of it becomes the equivalent of breathing. You point, you focus, you click. The camera is just an extension of your eyes.
Most cameras do not do this for me. Most cameras stay slightly external, slightly other, slightly “a camera I am using.” The S2A is the one that disappears in my hands. After seven years of pointing it at things, I do not have to think about it any more, and that means I get more frames of what I actually wanted to photograph because the kit is not in the way.
For family photographs in particular, this matters more than anything else. The point of family photographs is not the camera. The point is the family. A camera that makes me think about the camera less is, by definition, the right camera for that work.
The S2A is the family camera. Not because I assigned it that role, but because it earned it.
What I keep telling myself when I look at the price
People sell their S2As. I see them go on eBay regularly, often for not very much money, often in fully working condition. There is a moment every few months when I look at one of those listings and remember that mine is worth a few hundred pounds, that I have been selling other cameras for less than that, and that I could in principle add the S2A to the chopping block.
I never do. Every time, I come back to the same answer: this camera is doing something for me that another camera, even a more expensive one, cannot replicate. Selling it would not be a financial trade-off. It would be a loss of something I would have to spend years rebuilding with another body.
So it stays. Through every round of camera-collection thinning, through every “what do I actually need” review of what I own, the S2A is not on the list.
So
I am going to wrap this up because I have already gone gooier than I usually allow myself to get about cameras. But here is the closing thought: if you have read this far you might be wondering whether the S2A is worth picking up. The honest answer is that I cannot tell you. The S2A is mine and it is family, and I do not know whether yours would become family or just sit on a shelf.
What I can tell you is that the Bronica S2A is a properly good medium format camera, mechanically simple, well-built, with sharp Nikkor lenses, that is currently available secondhand at very reasonable prices. If you have been curious, the price of entry is genuinely low.
Whether yours becomes the one you will not sell after seven years is something only the seven years will tell you. Mine did.