What does it mean to dream about camera?
A camera usually points to how you frame and keep a moment, so it helps to ask what you were trying to capture and whether the shot came out.
Four ways to read it
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream.
Freud
Freud's approach would read the camera as a tool of looking and being looked at, bound up with the wish to see and the fear of being seen. Capturing an image can stand for the wish to hold on to what is fleeting.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung might see the camera as the part of you that observes and records experience, the witnessing self. What you choose to frame can show what you most want to keep or understand.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Continuity ties cameras to waking concerns about memory, attention, and how you present moments to others. A failed shot often echoes a fear of missing or losing something important.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Before the lens there was the magic mirror and the still pool that caught a likeness, holding an image apart from its owner. To seize a person's image was long thought to seize something of their self.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Frazer; Brewer).