Progress as a Photographer

I was trading emails with a film photographer, and mentioned that I had been a Canon shooter, and moved to Nikon.  He asked how or why I made the change.  This brings some history, and a chance to write for this blog.  

The first good camera I used was my father's Canon FTb. A solid needle match 35mm SLR.  My father was a pilot, a licensed commercial pilot, who flew just for the fun of it. While out on a Sunday afternoon joy ride, I took photographs of a couple of neighboring farms. The farmers saw them and wanted more.  I ordered a 135mm lens from New York (using my father's credit card over the phone without his permission.) The first check I wrote was for an airplane rental.  I started making enough money taking photos of farms from the air to start buying cameras and lenses. I started with a Canon F1n, a 50mm f1.4, a 28mm f2.8, a 200mm f4.0,a 100-200mm, later adding a Canon AE1 with a power winder, and a 24mm f2.8 (and amazing lens.)  Oh, and a Pentax 67, and Yashicamat 124G. And that was the kit I carried for about 15 years, all 25-30 pounds of it.  My first trip to Europe in 1990, I had both Canon bodies and four lenses in tow.  

After my mid-life crisis, I went through a long dry spell.  I didn't travel much, I didn't take a lot of photographs.  Around the year 2000 things changed and we started to travel.  Cameras had progress a lot in the decade of rebirth.  I decided what I really wanted was something compact, lighter in weight, and easy to use.  I went into my then local camera dealer, they appraised the two Canon bodies and all of the lenses (I think there were a couple of extra lenses and a set of close up bellows by then) and I traded the who lot on one new Nikon N65 with I think it was a 35 to 135 lens.  I got back two-cents in change, and insisted that they give me the 2-cents. 

It had a built in motor drive, and programmable auto exposure.  My use was sporadic.  I would shoot 15-20 36 exposure rolls in a week or so, then not touch the camera for months until the next trip. I used that for 4 or 5 years.  I dropped it lens down on a stone floor in the Louvre, one of only two cameras I have ever broken.  I bought a used lens the next morning a 28-160 that was a better lens than I was using.  (The other camera I crushed was a Lumix with a Leica lens that was crushed in my messenger bag as I was leaving for my one and only trip to Hawaii, a trip entirely recorded on a Samsung Galaxy phone.) 

I bought my first digital, thinking it was a toy.  A year or so later I realized I had film in the Nikon I had not used.  I had a progression of digitals, some large, some small pocket cameras (I still have a Samsung pocket cameras that I use when carrying a big camera would be difficult.) The technology was changing so fast, that I was upgrading every year or two. 

A few years ago, I decided I really wanted to go back to changeable lenses and an SLR format.  I looked around, and settled in the Nikon D5500 as a good value for me, and for what I use it for.  It is a smaller format, equivalent to 35mm APSC. But more than enough for what I do. And though the selection of lenses is somewhat limited, the lenses more than meet my needs.  I have two bodies, a 10.5mm fisheye, a 10-20, a 35mm, two 18-55mm (came standard with the bodies), an 18-200, and a 70-300.  Nikon made an 18-300, someday when I am not feeling stingy, I will buy one of those.  I do wish than Nikon made a lens longer than 300mm- to chase birds with- in the DX lens series.  There are other brands that offer longer lenses.  

Will I move onto another system?  Never say never.