Most photography anywhere takes place with wonderfully ordinary cameras. My most-used camera is the one in my pocket. (Sit down, Ricoh GR and Sony RX users, and sit the Canon G-series folks down with you; we know how small your cameras are.)

Let’s face it, the camera on your mobile phone is likely ordinary, as is mine. But I wouldn’t exchange it for a Rs10-lakh camera. No, actually I would. It would hamstring me, though. As an amateur from the middle class who doesn’t make a living from photography, I’d freeze. And as a street photographer, I’d think 10 times before letting the humid air touch the, so to say, white elephant. Having a relatively cheap and replaceable camera, such as the one on my midrange phone, sets me free to riff.

But first, speaking of the camera on my phone, it is so mid-range that the mobile salesman tossed a bunch of goodies into the mix – a pair of earphones and a basic smartwatch – just to get the phone out of his shop, and without me even having to bargain for it. If I’d held out, he might even have peeled off his wristwatch and given it to me.

You should have been there when I tested the camera, with, I imagine, the salesman on tiptoe in the background like a sportscar seller welcoming a loaded customer looking for a dopamine hit. Bless his beard which may well have quivered with anticipation, if not actually trembled. I didn’t see. But the guy needn’t have worried. My quality check involved, one, checking there was zero lag between the screen being tapped and the photo being recorded – which confirmed that the photo was of the right moment and not of the moment after it. Pretty basic, as you can see. Two, I checked that manual controls were provided for the rare occasion when needed (they were there). As for the rest, my standards were loosey-goosey, and when I took a few test shots of the interiors of the store and then the street through the glass storefront, I found the mobile camera, in terms of colour, clarity and processing, performed in an interestingly crappy way. I bought the phone right away.

My phone camera makes photos that are sharp, despite the wildly bad lens. Also, it often renders colours inaccurately but intriguingly, and ‘exposes’ (records brightness, midtones and shadows) in a very hit-and-miss way, which is also nicely moody. The photos are likely also to lose visual detail in the darker areas, which can make for an eye-catching effect.

Did anyone say, ‘texture’? Splendid! It’s perfect for my style of street photography, which focuses on daily life, everyday dramas and interactions on the street.

My hometown, Mumbai, is known as a glamorous tinsel town, and rightly so. I love that about it. But those kinds of glam photos are rare, and are mostly the full-time work of paid professionals. Me, I am a hobbyist, and there’s more to Mumbai than glamour. It’s the quotidian moments which make up the sinews of the city, any city. So far, I enshrine moments from the mundane and unglamorous side of the city, which are rendered well in the grungy style of my mobile camera.

A photographer, no one knows whom, said the best camera is the one you left at home. For me, that would be my professional camera. That’s the instrument I use for a commissioned portrait or a photo to go with my journalistic articles. For ‘EveryDay Carry’ (EDC) use, however, it’s not that camera, and not only because it’s bulkier. For EDC, it’s the phone camera, because its output is opinionated, which resonates with Mumbai as I see it, full of chaos, always on the make, vibrant with hustle, with street smarts, callousness and large-hearted kindness. This can also be shown wonderfully well with my pro camera, but not to my satisfaction. Photos made with that camera would then need a lot of work in editing software to look satisfactorily grungy – as I see the city. My mobile camera, like most of them, even produces grain – patterns that are blotchy or light-and-dark, basically glitches – in the darker areas of the photo. These technical imperfections can be aesthetically pleasing, and have a lineage dating back to the film photography days. Today, do you know how much time many a digital photographer spends to add grain while editing a photo, because their camera takes clean and flawless pictures? Here I get it out of the box, and rarely if ever tweak it. Fantastic!

What, about accuracy, you might say, what about colour reproduction? What about posterity’s sake and authenticity? To be honest, you’d have a point – up to a point. The world is in colour for most people, yet most old photography is in black and white. And all photos are 2D, which isn’t how the world is, last time you checked. But I’m the last person to theorise, I just see photo ops and take them. Many scholars have written stacks of books on this, a pile that grows taller and more daunting. For practical application, unless you’re a professional – a photojournalistic bear or advertising antelope or fashion photography zebra – these concerns, allow me to say, are persnickety. They mostly aren’t for amateurs, who are taking photos for the pleasure of it in a non-professional context, you leopard.

As the famous saying goes, ‘The best camera is the one you have with you’, which was probably said by someone who could afford to buy a darn good camera to carry with them. Me and probably you, not so much. And, for now, that’s an awesome constraint. Constraints foment creativity. I work with what the camera can do. I have to be pleasantly welcoming of the occasional artistic accident. I am free of the pressure to take A Banger Photo every time. I leave the tight-ass judgement for my professional output. As for daily street photography, thank goodness for my crappy camera, which also helps me take pictures in a pressure-free way.

Photos have imagination baked into them from the get-go, and they have had since the beginning. You’ve seen what’s credited to be the first surviving photo, Nicephore Niepce’s shot of a bland-looking roof? It looks like a woodcut to our eyes. If you’re taking photos for pleasure, so what if your photo of a sunset, for instance, appears more orange or less, or a bit more blurry or windblown, that it actually was, or slightly off in terms of composition? Why should it matter unless the photo is for a professional assignment? Or an exhibit at an evidentiary hearing. Just don’t use a photo editing/manipulation software to fake a photo or add or remove elements, and you’re largely good. Not sweating this stuff has freed me up to take more photos, mindfully but kindly, and with fidelity to aesthetic considerations.

Suhit Bombaywala’s factual and fictive writing appears in India and abroad. He tweets @suhitbombaywala.