Cameras, Cameras, Cameras...
When I was a young lad I had a fascination with my Dad's camera bags. He was a Pro and I would forever play with remote stutter release cables, light meters and strobes. I don't know how I didn't do permanent damage by popping eye-aching flashes point blank into my face, despite my Dad's warnings! I loved playing with filters and diffusers and all the other peripheral camera accessories...The actual cameras and lenses were off limits until I got a bit older.
Dad also did all his own processing and printing, both black and white and colour. What magic it was to see a something appear from nothing as paper swished around in those trays with funny smelling fluids under a dim red light! Photography has always been in me... Like most out there nowadays, I shoot 99.9% digital. I use a Pentax K20D with classic Pentax glass...mostly primes. It's at the ready with my 50mm f1.4 "fast 50". I also keep an adapter ring close by that with a quick flip of the lens, I can mount it backwards for an ideal macro. Makes for a light kit for walkabouts as well. My bag is pretty old school inside. Prime 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 100mm F2.4, 200mm and 400mm. Also in there is a bunch of Cokin filters which I use a lot. I like to do my filter effects in camera not on the computer. That includes Infrared which has been a fascinating effect to me forever. It is loads of fun to play around and since one gets instant results, it's way easier to see what works and what does not. I still have my Contax and Yashica 35mm SLR kits as well as the workhorses of vintage SLRs, the Pentax Spotmatic and K1000. Did you know that it was Pentax that introduced the SLR as we know it today lo so many years ago? I still like loading them once and a while but, man there really is no going back is there? The photos to the left were snapped with a very old Kodak Brownie medium format box camera...made in Canada no less. It's a hoot, one has a choice of 1/30 or bulb and a small and slightly less small aperture setting. A slightly newer British-made Coronet medium format in a leather case for those special occasions also sits on my shelf. It is technologically similar to the Brownie but shinier and a little more refined in appearance. This winter I built a 35mm pinhole camera from a kit. I loaded its first roll of film today and hopefully will Christen it tomorrow if it's a bright enough day. Film is tonnes of fun and the anticipation of picking up the proof sheet is something that is so sadly lost with digital. Why not dig out your old film camera and have some olde-fashioned fun soon? |