My name is Tord and I am at the moment in my stepson Peter's house
in Hoa Hin, Thailand, but normally I live in Sweden.
I have a mixed career behind me, from firefighting to
editor-in-chief, and my interests, beside photography,
is layout, illustrating, wrtiting and outdoor life, including
paddling. Aeronauticss and ornithology are my passions,
in addition to the wife :-)! And we are movie buffs!
Got my first camera at a tender age, a fixed focus Kodak,
at the age of seven, and about 7 years later I had upgraded
to an SLR, with three lenses, including a 400 mm and a
zoom, almost unheard of in those days. Got the whole
shebang, including the bag, for about US$ 120 .
not a bad deal, even if the equipment was well worn!
Just too much equipment, and too heavy, I switched to
two Minox ELs, one with Tri-X and one with slide film.
These I wore down, and I did indeed take a lot of photos with them.
Mostly snaps, but also long time exposures at night, crystal sharp!
When they were ready for the scrap heap, my life
took another turn, and the next decade I didn't
take a shot, Then I got run over, and during the
eight years of rehabilitation, old interests rekindled,
including photography and model aircraft flying.
The camera I bought was a Konica Big Mini (still around, somewhere)
and found in it a camera hard to not like,
So when I entered the 'digital revolution' my choice
was easy: Konica KD-500W.
That I used for years and years, later for backup,
and then came a Olympus C-8080, a camera very
close to perfect, and absolutely a delight using a flash.
The lens is second to none, the experts tell me, and
juding from results, they're right.
But it has it's flaws, of course, including two pictures
per minute, when taking RAW.
An updated C8080, with a CMOS, a modern processor,
and a bigger display would be a killer - but instead
Olympus decided to make even smaller 'superzooms'.
The next camera was a Fuji S9000, that never really
performed as planned - except in really good lighting
conditions - probably due to its small CCD. Sadly Fuji
seems keen on following the long lens, small CCD route
(they make the Hasselblads as well, but that's another story).
So, before going to Thailand for Peter's wedding, I had
started to look round for some sort of SLR, as all our
compacts, sooner or later, developed problems with
dust, and all had problems in bad lighting coditions.
Eventually it boiled down to five candidates:
Olympus E-P1 & E-P2, Lumix DMC-GF1, Nikon D300S and Pentax K-x
So off to MediaMarkt for a hold&feel session. As the wife had
her say, the D300S was just too big to hold comfortably - and quite
heavy as well, so that fell by the wayside, sadly (cost was also
a consideration in this case). The lack of viewfinder built-in,
sank the Olys and the Pan, so then there was just one left the
K-x!
Luckily they found one left, so on new year's eve I trotted out with
my first SLR in over 40 years.
Did it give me what I wanted?! You bet!
Now trying to finance a Tokina 70-200 Macro :-)!
Yours,
Tord
PS Once I had professional training in photography,
and my wife's first husband (R.I.P.) had a photo
studio, so she knows her cameras about as well,
or better, than I do., and darkrooms even better!
PPS By now, half a year later we have two K-5s and a K-7, plus an SFX!
And a lot of lenses! From 400mm to 15!
Last edited by Tord; 11-20-2010 at 02:16 PM.
Reason: lost a space!
Similar Threads 
