Hello. My name is Partha Sur. I am a retired software engineer and live in New Jersey, USA. I have had some interest in Photography since the early seventies and have done only film photography. I have an old Pentax MX and some SMC-M lenses. I am entirely self-taught and have had no formal training. I do not own a digital SLR yet (I have a tiny digital Canon Powershot point-and-shoot). Since retiring I have resumed my hobby with my Pentax MX. I came to USA in 1984 and just could not find the time for any serious (?) photography - long hours at work etc. Well, I started with the tiny Rollei 35 (40 mm f/3.5 Xenar) in 1972 and learned how to take basic photos with it. It had no focusing mechanism! You had to guess the distance and set it on the lens scale after setting the aperture and shutter speed on the body. And no depth-of-field preview just the scale. It taught me how to think about the shot before clicking and then "fill the frame" and often to "get close and personal" - the 40 mm lens saw to that. It was a little awkward to use - the film advance lever was on the left and the flash had to be mounted underneath the body! But the optics was superb - very sharp lens with rich color. Perhaps it was the Rollei that interested me in "real world" street photography type photos. You could do landscapes with the Rollei but they were not that great - too distant. But I still miss the Rollei 35. Then I traded it in (a mistake) for a new Fujica SLR in 1974 (that is all I could afford then besides a Praktica.) I soon traded that (not a mistake) for a new Canon FTb - fantastic lens! I then bought a Tamron 85-210 zoom for the FTb for taking cricket photos (I lived in England then) but what I really needed was a 400 mm for that but it was too expensive for me. All this time I really longed for a Olympus OM1 - which I could not afford. Then the FTb was stolen and I was again looking for a new SLR. I then bought the Pentax MX in 1980 which was just as compact as the OM1 and have used it since then to take family and vacation photos mostly. I just love the compact MX - reliable and built like a tank. And I have found that the SMC M lenses have very high build quality and optics. When (and if) I get a Pentax digital SLR I fully intend using my SMC M lenses. Believe it or not I am now doing a course in Black & White Photography (film!) in a community college and I am at last learning developing and printing! (Why ???.) I like all sorts of photo subjects but mainly pictures of ordinary people going about their daily lives. Although I have seen LIFE magazine pictures in the past my favorite "photo magazine" is still National Geographic. I like photos of different cultures. I like the works of Cartier-Bresson, Kertesz, Stieglitz, Eisenstadt, Feininger, Capa and other photojournalists. I hope to get pointers on photo subjects from you folks and learn a lot from your photos. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Best regards.
Last edited by psur45; 02-08-2011 at 07:38 AM.
I just watched a documentary on Cartier-Bresson I got from Netflix a couple weeks ago. Interesting fellow with some great work.
