Hello
Me
Well this is a nice surprise, so many interesting and informative threads here, I'm going to have sore eyes.
As the title suggests, I'm a 69yr young South Yorkshire Brit living in France for the last 42 years. At the moment I live in Craponne nr Lyon
My kit
I've loved using cameras ever since I can remember. My Dad offered me his Kodak brownie box camera when I was 9-10, and later a Kodak Instamatic 301.
Later a Praktika brought me into the world of SLR photography, and later my 1st boss introduced me to Olympus.
My OM10 was my companion until it stopped working ( even with the manual adapter ).
So I adopted a Pentax PZ-1p with various lenses which served me well until a thief took care of my bag.
Next followed my incursion into digital in early 2000 when I moved my family to the USA. I bought a Kodak DC3400 with 2MP pixels !! I still have it today, it works well, but I cant do phone calls with it
Not an SLR, it served me well, and through 2 decades I had various other digital compact cameras as they improved in resolution, and today use an Olympus TG-5 which is really useful esp for street work.
Of course these days smartphones are its equal, but its waterproof to 15m, light, has telephoto and wide angle, GPS, etc etc !! very rugged its with me all the time.
Now I'm retired and decided to re-adopt SLRs. After much research, I decided Nikon with a D610 50mm, 70-200mm f2.8, and 105mm Macro. Its taught me a lot about modern kit, but the budgets for mirrorless are bonkers.
BUT
I ALWAYS wanted to dabble with Medium format SLR especially for landscape work. Digtal MF cameras and lenses are off the scale prices, maybe one day. A Fuji would be nice.
So I decided to go back to film
I bought a 2nd hand ( or more ) Mamiya m645 which has stopped working and is under repair, and a Mamiya 645 Pro. For these I have 55mm,150mm and a 300mm lenses.
My experience with them is growing, but the MF kit is heavy and sometimes unwieldy, reminding me of my film days with the OM Series, so much lighter and practical.
Thus I recently acquired a OM-2N that has clearly hardly ever been used, and a OM-1N with 50mm f/1.8, 28 f3.5mm and 100-200mm f/4. Both need light seals to be replaced which will be my first project on them.
Do you think I suffer from the G.A.S syndrome ?
My hobby
Returning to film has been interesting, yes its expensive as I don't develop.
But because of that, all the aspects of framing, exposition etc force you to spend more time about what to produce and how. I like that, its reminding me of things I'd forgotten.
Did you know there's 4-5 brand new film cameras coming out including re-emmision of the Rollei 35 !!! , following on the footsteps of the Pentax 17
Who says film is dead?
I like street but also landscape primarily, hence MF, contentious I know, actually for what I do, the D610 is terrific, though not as light and small as the OM Series.
I've even bought a Fotodiox adapter to try the Mamiya MF lenses on my Nikon.
I'd love to do studio portraits, but all the girls I ask say no
( it may be the way I ask ). I have no experience nor kit for appropriate lighting, so I am a ways off from doing that properly just yet. A lot to learn.
I havent set up a website yet to post any images, need to read and learn more about other people's experiences. I'll post sparsely in the gallery section to tickle your fancy.
I am studying the work of experts and recently learnt about Vivian Maier's work. Her vision and "eye" was really exceptional.
Our club
I'm a member of our local photo club in Craponne called ICY - Images Craponne Yzeron - run by our president Yves Kapfler. We're currently organising our 1st expo, due in mid November. I never dreamt there'd be so many intricacies of organising them.
Hopefully the club interaction will help me learn more about this fantastic hobby, how to use my kit for better images, how to maintain it, and explore art forms.
Bye for now.
Ian
Me
Well this is a nice surprise, so many interesting and informative threads here, I'm going to have sore eyes.
As the title suggests, I'm a 69yr young South Yorkshire Brit living in France for the last 42 years. At the moment I live in Craponne nr Lyon
My kit
I've loved using cameras ever since I can remember. My Dad offered me his Kodak brownie box camera when I was 9-10, and later a Kodak Instamatic 301.
Later a Praktika brought me into the world of SLR photography, and later my 1st boss introduced me to Olympus.
My OM10 was my companion until it stopped working ( even with the manual adapter ).
So I adopted a Pentax PZ-1p with various lenses which served me well until a thief took care of my bag.
Next followed my incursion into digital in early 2000 when I moved my family to the USA. I bought a Kodak DC3400 with 2MP pixels !! I still have it today, it works well, but I cant do phone calls with it
Not an SLR, it served me well, and through 2 decades I had various other digital compact cameras as they improved in resolution, and today use an Olympus TG-5 which is really useful esp for street work.
Of course these days smartphones are its equal, but its waterproof to 15m, light, has telephoto and wide angle, GPS, etc etc !! very rugged its with me all the time.
Now I'm retired and decided to re-adopt SLRs. After much research, I decided Nikon with a D610 50mm, 70-200mm f2.8, and 105mm Macro. Its taught me a lot about modern kit, but the budgets for mirrorless are bonkers.
BUT
I ALWAYS wanted to dabble with Medium format SLR especially for landscape work. Digtal MF cameras and lenses are off the scale prices, maybe one day. A Fuji would be nice.
So I decided to go back to film
I bought a 2nd hand ( or more ) Mamiya m645 which has stopped working and is under repair, and a Mamiya 645 Pro. For these I have 55mm,150mm and a 300mm lenses.
My experience with them is growing, but the MF kit is heavy and sometimes unwieldy, reminding me of my film days with the OM Series, so much lighter and practical.
Thus I recently acquired a OM-2N that has clearly hardly ever been used, and a OM-1N with 50mm f/1.8, 28 f3.5mm and 100-200mm f/4. Both need light seals to be replaced which will be my first project on them.
Do you think I suffer from the G.A.S syndrome ?
My hobby
Returning to film has been interesting, yes its expensive as I don't develop.
But because of that, all the aspects of framing, exposition etc force you to spend more time about what to produce and how. I like that, its reminding me of things I'd forgotten.
Did you know there's 4-5 brand new film cameras coming out including re-emmision of the Rollei 35 !!! , following on the footsteps of the Pentax 17
Who says film is dead?
I like street but also landscape primarily, hence MF, contentious I know, actually for what I do, the D610 is terrific, though not as light and small as the OM Series.
I've even bought a Fotodiox adapter to try the Mamiya MF lenses on my Nikon.
I'd love to do studio portraits, but all the girls I ask say no
( it may be the way I ask ). I have no experience nor kit for appropriate lighting, so I am a ways off from doing that properly just yet. A lot to learn.I havent set up a website yet to post any images, need to read and learn more about other people's experiences. I'll post sparsely in the gallery section to tickle your fancy.
I am studying the work of experts and recently learnt about Vivian Maier's work. Her vision and "eye" was really exceptional.
Our club
I'm a member of our local photo club in Craponne called ICY - Images Craponne Yzeron - run by our president Yves Kapfler. We're currently organising our 1st expo, due in mid November. I never dreamt there'd be so many intricacies of organising them.
Hopefully the club interaction will help me learn more about this fantastic hobby, how to use my kit for better images, how to maintain it, and explore art forms.
Bye for now.
Ian
.
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