One of my passions

I am afraid I must have burnt out a little as the last several days not only have I not posted much but I also have not been visiting everyone’s blogs like I enjoy. In an effort to ease myself back into this I thought I would share some of what I have been doing over the last several days.

I have the itch again. Normally I am the kind of person that if I have something that is working I wait until it breaks before I will buy something new. A classic example, I had a 19 Hitachi TV that had developed problems but was basically working. It was not until it finally died that I went out and got a nice 27 Sony. I wanted a different TV for some times but no, the one I had was fine.

Well it would appear that only partially applies with cameras. I seem to have this love affair with the camera. I remember having some sort of camera when I was real young and opening the back of the camera to look at the film. Hey, I was always curious. Anyway, despite doing this with low light it still did not help the film out any.

My first serious camera was a Minolta. I had this camera in part of grade school and in High School and still have it although I do not use it anymore. I took this camera to Europe when I went with the High School band in the summer of '73. I had this camera when I took pictures of several float parties including the 1972 float party that we built Raggedy Ann and Andy for the theme "Through the Eyes of a Child." I took a lot of pictures. Most of which were slides. I developed my own style. I loved the candid pictures rather then posed pictures. I got pretty good at it. People hated to have their pictures taken but enjoyed seeing them when I got the pictures back.

Sometime after graduation High School I added another camera. I bought a Canon AE-1. What a great camera. I certainly made use of that for lots of things including scenery. But it did not end there. I just had to add a nice lense. I purchased a 70-210 zoom. Now this was not a canon lense but I did not care.


I had several problems with the lense that I just learned to adjust to. First it could only do a f4.0 which means I did not do real well in low light situations. Other things that bothered me include the settings on the lense itself were not real convenient and did not lock in well. It was not uncommon for me to slip off of the setting I thought I was on and spoil the pictures I was taking.

I needed a better flash, especially for the candid pictures I enjoyed. I bit the bullet and got a potato masher. Now that is not what it was called heard people call it that different places. I think I was being influence by my friend who was taking wedding pictures on the side. I bought a Sunpak 611. With this I could shoot pictures at 50 or 60 feet away and it turned out great. It complimented my zoom lense well. Now I feel sorry for the people that I must have given sunburn to when taking long distance pictures and they were standing near buy. Other than how heavy it was, I love that flash.


Well I had the itch again. Everything was working well. I had even added a auto winder to the mix so I could take pictures faster. Sometimes that really came in handy for the candid shots that I continued to love. But this was not enough. I ended up adding a Canon A1 body to the mix. It was a nice camera and I so enjoyed it. I could share the lenses with the AE-1 also, how nice. I think some of what it did for me is allow me to have more than one camera with different lenses and even different film some times. This helped with times when my zoom lense was to much for a few pictures I wanted to take although the rest were OK with the lense. Also sometimes I was in a sticky situation where the ASA 400 film I was using was just to much and I needed a slower film. This happened some times when I was doing scenery shoots.


At one point I entertained taking wedding pictures. I had gotten pretty good at taking pictures at weddings. Afterwards I put together a small album and gave that as a gift to the couple. I was having a good time with this until the incident. I set my camera incorrect. It was not syncing up with the flash. I found this out when I got onto the 4th roll of film. I feared the results and my fear was justified. I have very lovely pictures of peoples FEET as the shutter closed just as the flash was doing it’s thing. So I ended up with one roll of film that was OK. I was so disappointed and ended my thoughts right then of taking pictures of weddings other than just causally. Besides, I compliment wedding pictures more that anything. I get the candid shots you never get from the professionals. I would have forced myself to do the posed shots but I know they would not have been as good as other people could take anyway.

Well, as it turned out that incident also started to turn me off of picture taking all together. That and how much people really hated to have their picture taken. I went for a long time and hardly took pictures. When I did, sometimes I even got one of those disposable cameras since it was easier. Sometimes I would not develop the film even. I was in a slump but all that would end when I finally did it. I bought a digital camera, a Fuji S602 Zoom camera. It was amazing, it was fun. I could easily take 100 pictures without even thinking about it. I loved being able to see the pictures I just took and make adjustments. I was enjoying taking pictures again. That brings us to today.


I still am having a good time but there is a problem. This camera is no where near as nice as the Canon cameras I have but I can not bring my self to use a film camera except in rare instances. The wonderful pictures I got at weddings were just OK. I could not see to properly frame pictures and the auto focus was not a lot of help in the dark. Of course I could not manual focus either because of the dark. I noticed that when I take pictures at dance recitals, which is something I have done a lot of, the pictures were always blurry as I could not use flash and everything was moving. Outdoor shorts were super with the camera but it just could not do the type of shots that I seem to do a lot of. Even the indoor shots of my niece playing basketball or cheerleading were blurry unless I was careful how I took the pictures. So I got that itch again and started looking. That is part of what I have been doing. My cousin, brother and bother-in-law all got new cameras in the last few years. They got a Canon Digital Rebel XT. This camera alone goes a long ways to correcting the problems I have with digital camera. It turns on in 2 tenths of a second. It hardly has a delay like most digital cameras have so you do not need to lead pictures as much as I have had to or to play tricks with the camera to take the picture faster. The pictures that you turn out are very nice and this is a 8 meg camera meaning I can do almost anything I could do with the film camera except possibly blowing up pictures to poster size.


The Rebel was part of my answer but there was more to the equation that I did not figure out until my BIL got his Canon zoom lense, the lense. Oh my what a sweet lense. It could zoom between 70 and 200 which I really like the range. What made it sweet is it did this at F2.8 continuos. At last a lense that provided the zoom ability but also allowed much lower light situations. Pictures in the gym are a snap and very clear. Pictures are clear that used to be blurry. I am sure the recital pictures would be much improved also if not perfect. I really love that lense and that camera. Of course the down side is the camera costs little more than I would like to spend but I will manage. The lense, however, is much more than the camera. Now it is worth it but oh my gosh that will hurt. So I have been looking around for deals. Mail order places I think I can trust, ebay, you name it. Hay everyone needs a hobby.


Well sorry for the long boring post and I am very impressed if you made it this far. You get a gold star for sure.