My First Love... Photography

My first love was/is photography

My first camera was a little mini camera purchased for me by my parents for a good report card, it was either 1963 or 1964. I'm leaning towards 63.

It was a little snap shooter with a shutter lever and a film advance knob. In total, I think I had two or maybe three rolls of film developed. I know the pictures don't exist anymore.

The next camera was a Minolta Mini 16mm "Spy Camera". I don't know the year. It was a knock off of the Minox. I had more rolls developed. Again, I don't think the pictures survived, but the camera did, I still have it.

The next camera was an SLR, I don't remember which make, maybe a Petri. Then came my Nikormat, purchased in the Virgin Islands when I was 17. I took that camera to Europe in 1979. I don't remember what happened to it. I think I sold it.

I was in college when I bought the first camera love of my life, a Hasselblad 500CM. Man, what a camera, what a piece of equipment. This was the camera that I dreamed of. I sold it after my daughter became mobile around 1990. You just can't take pictures of kids with a fully manual camera outside of a studio setting.

After selling the Hasselblad, I bought a Nikon N6006. It was auto everything. It could catch my two year old daughter in mid stride. I still own it. By the time I decided to part with it, it wasn't worth selling.

In 1999 I bought my last film camera a Contax G1 viewfinder stye camera. I was tired of lugging around SLR's. I'd had some point and shoot cameras that did an acceptable job, but good glass is good glass. This was my transition into Digital Photography.

I'd been scanning photos since the mid 80's. Film scanners were out of my fiscal reach. Scanning actual photos was less than pleasing. However, in the late 90's this changed. I could scan photos decently and reproduce a larger print on the desktop. The printers were also a hindrance in the past.

I didn't keep the Contax long. I used it to finance my first digital camera, a Canon G1. This along with an Olympus model were the first consumer models available. Oddly, after doing my research I went to buy the Olympus, but they were out of stock. I bought the G1, which was a nice happenstance. Canon has always included a nice software suite with their cameras and I've always recommended them.

I've been digital since about 2000, and I have hardly looked back. I've done a little back sliding, that's another story.

My girlfriend, now my wife, bought me a Canon 20D. When we were going to Paris to see my daughter for her high school graduation, I bought a Canon XTi. This was just in case the 20D body died.

Both those cameras were sold and replaced with a Canon 50D and a Canon T2i. I recently augmented them with a Canon XSi.

Reviews to follow