This thread is a very interesting read.
- My Mom had a reflex 127 camera and Dad had a Kodak 35mm with a fixed lens, that I got to use.
- In the 7th grade, I took Print Shop and we built our own pin hole coffee can cameras out of the old 1 pound Yuban tin cans, painted flat black inside, with black and white sheet film that we would then develop and contact print. I tried B&W film developing at home, but was really never that successful at it. I used Dad's 35 for many years backpacking - especially when I went to Philmont with the Boy Scouts.
- When I was in the Navy, they sent me to Radar School, then Electronic Warfare School (Radar jamming), then Morse Code School and when I got aboard ship, then sent me to a 3 week photography class to shoot pictures of ships (that we were listening to) and in particular their superstructures and masts - basically photographing the antennas. I had a suit case of camera gear - all big and heavy Nikon with a nice assortment of lenses. The problem was that for every frame I shot, I needed to fill out 2 pages of information - date, time, position, weather, cloud cover, sea state, sun angle, bearing and distance to the object being photographed, own ship's course and speed, the other ship's course and speed, etc., etc., etc. About once a week we were close enough to what we were listening to, to actually go up to the flying bridge and shoot some pictures. I had rigged up a stanchion that had a loop of fire hose that I would set the lens in (500mm or 1000mm you could not hold on a rolling ship) to help steady the lens to actually (maybe) focus it and try to get an image that was not blurred. I was never really any good with anything over 500mm I felt. Never really got to see any of the images in terms of how they turned out - we just sent the film in (to the Indiana Jones warehouse). But I hated the Nikon so much, that in the Canal Zone, I actually picked up my Asahi Spotmatic IIa - that I still have. Small, light, nice, and no frigging big lens. Then I had an idea. Rather than use a big lens (that I felt were useless), I talked the Gunner's Mates in to spinning up the 51 5" Gun Director with the fully stabilized optical sights, that had a camera mount attachment. Much better - problem solved.
- Going back to school - I was a poor college student - buying film was not an option - let alone processing it. All my spare cash went to buying boxes of computer punch cards and ramem. Even after graduation, and going to work, photography was really too expensive. I had a couple of cheap cameras - and occasionally I shot my Spotmatic.
- 30+ years later in 2005, we took a family vacation up to Alaska - the Inland Passage cruise. My wife arranged for a whale watching trip before flying out back to Arizona late that evening (you know - land of the midnight sun). I had a little Canon SD500 P&S. I did really like very much, but trying to shoot a breaching whale was nearly impossible. Whale starts to jump, push shutter - listen to Jeopardy music until the whale splashes and then the shutter goes off. Lots of pictures of empty water in front of the glacier. There were a set of twin brothers on board shooting for National Geographic according to their Dad. They had just shot 6 weeks of bears in Alaska and was taking the whale watching trip with their Dad and their wifes. They had the most fanatic set of camera equipment I have ever seen. I had never seen so many bodies and lenses outside of a camera store. They would burn through 500 frames to my one. One brother would finish with one camera and his wife would hand him another body and lens (new battery, new card), and then reset it up again - pulling out the card and putting it into a folder - keeping everything indexed. I decided right then and there that I needed to graduate to a digital SLR. It did help that my wife told me that I had better get interested in something else other than work, or I was going to be a very dull person in retirement.
So, here I am. I continually cycle through all the levels. The last few years, I have started looking at light much differently. Trying to actually and realistically capture it - is something else..... If I shoot a lot, my skills increase a lot. If I don't shoot for a while, my skills disappear.
It is interesting to me that I can pick up a magazine or go to a website and see pictures and know / understand what the photographer did for the most part. I have also come to appreciate the notion of getting close - and then get closer still. I am learning again, trying to capture the image right - framing it and framing it again. Trying to work a bit slower - but I find I loose the light, especially on the sunsets. I do a lot of bracketing, in order to capture the dynamic range and the colors and textures - or at least try to. I also try to work the location, trying to see as many of the potential shots as possible and take them. In reviewing the shots, I am constantly seeing, what I missed, thinking - why did I not see that at the time.
I do appreciate good equipment, but I am essentially going all AF - especially for anything over 85mm. I just can not manual focus long lenses any longer - even with a lens support and live view. Zoom and AF - its framing/composing and capturing the image.
Post #1 by vagabond79
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