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Keeping It Light

dynachrome

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Sep 16, 2006
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1,861
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35mm
I am in Cape May for the week. Recently I have not been feeling 100%. In previous years I brought a lot more cameras and lenses, including medium format equipment. This year I decided to go for lighter stuff. I brought a Minolta X-9, a Minolta X-370, a 28-85 Minolta MD, a 50/3.5 MD Macro, a Vivitar Series 1 200mm f/3 and a Vivitar 28-50. I don't carry all of it at one time. Half of today I just carried the X-9 with the 50. My wife jokes that I take the same pictures every year. She's probably right but I still enjoy taking them and seeing the results later. Maybe next year I'll bring a pair of Canon F-1 cameras and some heavier lenses. If I knew where I put my Minolta 200/4 lenses I might have brought one of them instead but the Vivitar has closer focusing, which is handy for some subjects.
 
dynachrome said:
My wife jokes that I take the same pictures every year.
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Mine too. Makes me wonder if it's going to be a lifelong joke.

Lately I've been mainly using Nikon FM with 35 mm PC lens, just for fun.
 
Funny how different the concept of traveling light is for different people! I only travel with my N80 & 28-80mm. If I'm feeling particularly adventurous, I might throw the Holga in the backpack too

As for taking the "same picture" every year, I can understand the comfort the ritualistic nature of that may bring. One could also argue that just like you can never step in the same river twice, one can never shoot the same landscape twice...throw that one at your wife and see what she says!
 
You know, at some point I would use my N80 with 35-80 AF, 50 AF or 28-105 AF, but N80 is not a fun camera for me. It's a camera that gets the job done, but definitely not the camera I enjoy using.
 
M-88 said:
You know, at some point I would use my N80 with 35-80 AF, 50 AF or 28-105 AF, but N80 is not a fun camera for me. It's a camera that gets the job done, but definitely not the camera I enjoy using.
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Don't say that in front of these guys!

What makes a camera fun/enjoyable to use? What does the N80 lack for you?
 
I use the N75 or F100 with a Tamron 28mm to 300mm AF zoom lens.
 
At this point traveling light to me means a Minolta 5 or 7, 50mm, 24 to 80 F4, if feeling frisky a 200 2.8, set of filters, film, spare battery, in my suitcase a 600Si as backup.
 
dynachrome said:
My wife jokes that I take the same pictures every year. She's probably right but I still enjoy taking them and seeing the results later.
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Sounds like a good reason to go some place different for a change. You know, mix it up.
 
you can never step into the same river twice.
 

But are they getting any better.
 
Daniela said:
What makes a camera fun/enjoyable to use? What does the N80 lack for you?
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Its functionality strongly reaembles that of a digital camera. Which of course is not a bad thing on its own - it means the camera is pretty advanced, gets the job done no matter what and it's efficient in doing so. It's just my personal preference to complicate my life with manual advance/rewind, manual exposure and unsophisticated meterinf circuit.

Don't get me wrong, the fact that I haven't sold this camera for over 12 years speaks for itself. If I am to photograph soemthing important, Everything else stays home and N80 comes with me. And you know what? Nothing is softer than its mirror mechanism. I can consistently have steady shots with 50 mm lens at 1/15th of a second. Handheld.
 
You can step in the same river over and over again. Heraclitus didn't know what a river was, apparently.
 
M-88 said:
gets the job done no matter what
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Apparently not when in the hands of certain photographers . I just developed a roll I shot at night and most frames are so underexposed you can only see a dot from a source light LOL I'm a little baffled, but I don't doubt I'm the cause of it.

I agree with you on the handheld steadiness!

Don_ih said:
You can step in the same river over and over again. Heraclitus didn't know what a river was, apparently.
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Maybe there was an error in translation!
 
Daniela said:
Apparently not when in the hands of certain photographers . I just developed a roll I shot at night and most frames are so underexposed you can only see a dot from a source light LOL I'm a little baffled, but I don't doubt I'm the cause of it.
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I'm sure it's not that bad, not at all. Low light photography is a tricky subjct. It's not your hands, it's the light meter of the camera that can easily be fooled by the light sources present within the frame Even the matrix metering isn't foolproof.
 
George Mann said:
My main camera/lens combo is an FM with a 35mm f/2.8 Ai lens.

But my lightest rig is an FG + 35mm Series E.
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Nice combo! I actually have 35 mm Series E and I'd normally use that lens with my FM, but 35 mm PC is relatively new to me so I'm basically playing with it now.
 
As anybody who has actually stepped into a river knows, a river is more than a name printed next to a squiggly blue line on a map.
 
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Are they getting any better? Later this year will be fifty years since I started driving. I no longer have the reflexes of a sixteen year old but I have a lot more experience. I have been taking pictures even longer. I didn't really start collecting until about 1989. The enjoyment I get from using and collecting cameras and lenses is still with me even if I don't have the same enthusiasm I did as a boy. Some of the pictures I take now are better than the ones I took more than half a century ago and some are not. I still think about Verchrome Pan, Panatomic X and Kodachrone II sometimes.
 

And not Dynachrome??!?
 
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