What's Your Personal Camera History?

It's the photographer that makes the image. That's an axiom. A good photographer can make wonderful images with whatever equipment they have access to. And... a fantastic, state-of-the-art, super duper, expensive camera can produce lackluster results if not used properly.

With THAT out of the way...

I love photography. All types. I've applied myself over several decades to refine my art and craft. And I really REALLY like some of the cool machines I've owned or used. So, here is a brief history of my cameras thru out the ages:

To begin with, I first remember at about age 6 using a folding Polaroid and peel apart film. That goo we spread on the B&W prints was really smelly. And we saved the negatives to order prints from (or print yourself).

Dad also let me use as my own cameras his Baby Rollei (using 127 film for 4x4 negs) and a 35mm rangefinder Kodak Pony.

We photographed a lot of stuff in the 60s and 70s. I learned from my Dad and from magazines how to manipulate what I had on hand to get the final result I wanted. No surprise that I took a couple of years of photo classes in high school. Actually, I primarily did that to gain access to their darkroom! I ended up with an arrangement where I took care of the maintenance and resupplied anything I used personally. 

Finally got my own darkroom at age 17 when I won my bid to do the corporate portraits for the engineering firm my Dad worked at. The profit from that job paid for the entire darkroom and more.

So, I was a professional photographer in the  real sense. People paid me for photographs I took. Besides the portraits, I did job site photos of construction projects and finished plants and buildings. Did you know that some of the best views of a petro-chem refinery can be found at 2:00am from one hundred feet in the air?

Obviously, I was using higher caliber equipment by this time. I purchased cameras and lenses used and new as I needed them. One of my first 'real' cameras was a Nikkormat FT, later upgrading to the Nikon FM. I was working part time at a camera retail store in my late teens and early 20s. Discounts were not to be had on the extremely slim margins photographic retail operated on for bodies and lenses, but I had 1st choice of virtually any trade in that came thru the doors. Plus, I could borrow store/dealer/rep demo cameras that would later be sold at huge discounts. Which is how I fell in love with the Nikon F2AS and Hasselblad 500C/M outfits.

I settled for owning the Nikon FM with a variety of lenses (including the legendary 105mm f/2.5), a Leica M3 with several lenses (50mm Dual Range was a fave), and the early Mamiya 645 system for weddings.

I kept those for a long time, but I did add to and sometimes replaced with other systems for various reasons. Like, for size, I opted in to the Olympus OM system with the OM-1 and OM-2SP. Also, for certain specialty lenses such as the 250mm f/5.6 mirror lens (great for astrophotography) on a Minolta XD-11.

For the one season I shot high school and junior college football playoffs, I used the built for sports photography Canon F1 system. Their lightweight telephotos and the F1's Speed Finder were great for that use.

I was offered the opportunity by the camera store I worked for to do some of their commercial print ads and even some training videos and local TV commercials. I used my own Leica Visoflex and 65mm Elmar along with the store's Pentax 67, Mamiya RB67, and an old monorail 4x5 view camera. I also used my own early JVC video camera (recording on U-Matic and early VHS decks - NOT portable!) and the store's 8mm and 16mm film movie cameras.

From the mid 1990s on, I was also shooting digital. I used little point and shoot cameras and had my 35mm chromes digitized to satisfy my clients need for digital files. I wasn't giving up 35mm SLRs until digital matched Kodachrome 25 for quality AND at a reasonable price. That actually happened sometime around 2001 or so with the Canon EOS 1D. Still, I waited for that quality to come down to consumer priced models, which it had by the time I got my first Digital SLR, an early Nikon in 2007.

Now, I don't use my 35mm film cameras (what few I have left) much at all, but am constantly upgrading to better, higher image quality DSLRs, lenses, and all the supporting image manipulation software. I still use some roll film medium format folders from time to time for personal B&W, but all my WORK is digital.

I enjoyed my trip down Camera Memory Lane, hope you did as well.