From toy to SLR
From age 13 I got my first "toy" camera and I immediately
loved taking pictures. Somewhat later I got a small Nikon
compact camera with built-in flash and zoom lens, a simple
and nice little thing, but soon after that I wanted to know
more about shutter speeds, apertures, field of depth and
all other technical aspects of photography. In order to do
so I kind of "confiscated" my fathers Nikkormat FTN camera. Fully
manual machine with an in-camera light meter, it was the
ideal equipment to start learning. To this very day I
have the Nikkormat in my possession, I\ll never sell it.
When I got a little older my father, after being deprived
of his old camera, bought a Nikon F801, at that time a
state of the art camera. I couldn't resist and started
saving for the same thing... Well a lot of years have
passed and I wasn't photographing all the time. While
studying for my engineering degree and at the beginning
of my professional career, my camera's stayed mostly in
the bag. It must have been beginning of 2001 that I
renewed my interest in photography because by then you
could easily combine it with another hobby of mine:
computers! I used to shoot diachrome which I scanned
using a Nikon CoolScan III. So in a fact I was still
shooting analog.
From analog to digital
By the end of 2002 I switched completely to digital when I
bought a Fuji Finepix S2Pro. At that
time it produced some of the finest images due to
it’s unique SuperCCD sensor design. Also all my
existing Nikon lenses worked on the Fuji. Although the
Fuji was a great camera and I had so much fun with it,
it was after all based on plastic consumer SLR body. The
S2Pro also wasn’t highschool champ in the
speed-of-operations dept. So a few years after that I
thought let’s treat myself to some real pro
equipment and I got a Nikon D2x. A truly great
camera and it proved itself worthy during my concert
shoots. Extraordinary batterylife, at lower ISO’s
great sensor fidelity, it required premium glass to
benefit fully from the CMOS sensor [so I got a little
deeper in my wallet to by some Nikon Pro glass too].
From big to small
BUT, there was a problem with the D2x too! It was soo heavy
and bulky that the only reasonable way to carry it around
was in a backpack where it could be stowed away with a
17-55DX lens + lenscap on it. Most ordinary bags were too
small for it. So after a while I noticed I was not reaching
for the D2x that much anymore when going out or leaving on
a day’s trip, I couldn’t bring myself to
carrying that thing around my neck, feeling like a sherpa
with the backpack etc. especially on a warm sunny day.
Someone wise once said: the best camera, is the
camera you have with you. It doesn’t matter
if you have a better one that’s sitting in the
closet. Well I could not agree more! In the meantime I sold
the S2Pro to Alain Grootaers who took it with him on
his sabatical year traveling in the
East. I bought a Nikon D40 instead which was
the smallest DSLR at the time [it still is among the
smallest]. Whenever we went out it I always grabbed the
D40 instead of his bigger brother.
So after a while I said to myself “Let’s stop
this quest for the biggest and the best” and I sold
the D2x [To Dirk Holvoet, a
photojournalist who is making great use of it now] which
I in turn replaced by a Nikon D90. Pretty small,
consumer level but [thanks to the never-ending evolution
in digital technology] with a sensor that surpassed the
D2x’s in quality. It takes pictures at least as
good, it’s smaller and it weighs a freaction, why
hesitate?? To this day I never regretted this decision
and I still am amazed each time at how much quality this
small and cheap litt’l camera produces.
and to Less IS More!
These days I want to carry only the necessary, preferably
smallest equipment around. I’m even going out of the
house with nothing more than a digi pocket. I bought a
Panasonic Lumix LX2 a while
ago and was very surprised by it’s quality and
ease of use. Later on I also added a Ricoh CX1 and now a
Leica D-Lux 4 as well.
The only way you can go out and shoot happily with a
point-and-shoot is when you stop caring about the
pixel-peeping’s
opinions!
Honestly, I don’t get this: for years we have been
used to the fact that high ISO film produced a grainy look,
and that is putting it mildly when looking at a 6400 ISO
film image. For decennia nobody complained, this was the
way it was, and in fact it was used to an extend as a
creative outlet as well. Those old grainy black and white
pictures had something about them sure enough. Fast forward
to today, people are gazing at computer monitors with
images blown up to 100% looking at grain levels on shots at
3200-6400 ISO complaining it still has SOME specks in it!!
We cannot even compare today’s top DSLR’s high
ISO performance anymore to the old film days. Even a point
and shoot has less grain than typical film [although maybe
more artefacting, but let’s not get into that]. I
have a technical background so it was easy enough for me to
get sucked into this and go with the rest, comparing images
at all ISO ratings and preferably from different sources,
looking for the best camera at that moment.
However I found out that it got seriously in the way of my
shooting, instead of going out and taking pictures I lost
too much time behind the computer roaming the internet with
it’s immense wealth of review sites, blogs and
forums. I still enjoy reading about the occasional camera
shootout now and then, but I don’t let it get in the
way anymore of shooting and certainly not of making a
decision to buy a certain camera.