An Echo from Across the Years

[Jager]

Of photography, chance, and magic…

http://jeffreyhughes.net/wordpress/2016/05/06/an-echo-from-across-the-years/

 

[MartinCrabtree]

Nice read.

 

[ciniframe]

An AE1?!?!
I must be getting really old. I still consider that a "modern camera". Electronic shutter speed control, plastic top and bottom plates, auto exposure control, yeah, it's 'modern'.
I suppose it is when you entered the field or what your first "serious" camera was. Mine was a used, but not that old Miranda G equipped with a 50 f1.9 lens. Did have a meter though. Shortly thereafter fell in love with 35mm half frame and had a couple of Pen F bodies and 5 or 6 lenses. Those are long gone but about 12 years ago got a yearning to return and picked up a body and have obtained 4 original Pen primes and that keen but big and heavy 50 to 90 zoom. At that time it had been almost three decades since I'd shot with a Pen F, but as they say the camera 'fell to hand' and in 10 minutes it seemed the intervening years dissolved.

 

[benjiboy]

Consumer grade S.L.R film cameras haven't to any significant degree got much better than the Canon A series of cameras in the intervening thirty odd years and there are still millions still in regular use worldwide even though they are all far beyond their original designers envisaged usefull life.

 

[Alan W]

A good read.I used a Canon AE1 Program in the early nineties.It seemed like a good camera at that time but now it looks and feels like cheap plastic.Now I use an F1 or a t90.The AE1 is a very easy camera to get the hang of and doesn't require a manual in my opinion.

 

[blockend]

Consumer grade S.L.R film cameras haven't to any significant degree got much better than the Canon A series of cameras in the intervening thirty odd years and there are still millions still in regular use worldwide even though they are all far beyond their original designers envisaged usefull life.

The evolution of cameras has been less of technology, more of democratic access. The template for 35mm cameras has been around for almost a century - cinema film used in hand held cameras with variable aperture and shutter speed and high quality lenses. What's changed is access to the type. An early Leica would have been a substantial investment for a privileged middle class person, for an ordinary guy buying one would be unthinkable.

By the 1960s SLR cameras were beginning to come into enthusiast budgets, and the Canon A-Series of the late 70s democratised them further with plastic, battery powered, mass produced models. This has reached its natural conclusion today, with artisan made 35mm cameras costing £10k with a lens, offering results virtually indistinguishable from a camera costing the price of two or three rolls of film.

 

[benjiboy]

The evolution of cameras has been less of technology, more of democratic access. The template for 35mm cameras has been around for almost a century - cinema film used in hand held cameras with variable aperture and shutter speed and high quality lenses. What's changed is access to the type. An early Leica would have been a substantial investment for a privileged middle class person, for an ordinary guy buying one would be unthinkable.

By the 1960s SLR cameras were beginning to come into enthusiast budgets, and the Canon A-Series of the late 70s democratised them further with plastic, battery powered, mass produced models. This has reached its natural conclusion today, with artisan made 35mm cameras costing £10k with a lens, offering results virtually indistinguishable from a camera costing the price of two or three rolls of film.

Quite true blockend, I bought a second hand A1 in those days that someone part exchanged I still use it occasionally because the New F1 was much more than I could afford in those days ( I now have four of them) because I had a young family. Many customers who bought the A series Canon S.L.R.'s as soon as compact cameras with reliable auto focus systems came out traded their A series SLR in for them because in those days before Minolta brought out the first one there were no auto focus SLR's

 

[TheToadMen]

This was fun to read. Thanks.