Hello from Kentucky!

[BassPilot]

Hello to all!

I'm migrating from DPReview since this forum seems much more easy-going, and because I want to support this site. Rather than hang around DPReview and complain about David's absence, I thought I'd sign up here and perhaps gain some knowledge that will help me utilize my new A350 more effectively.

David, I'd like to subscribe to Photoworld if you can come up with a way to actually make money from my subscription. I know that if you mail each issue to me individually to me here in Kentucky the cost of postage offsets whatever profit you otherwise derive from my subscription. What if I subscribe and you hold my four issues until they can be shipped together in one shipment? You'll only have to pay postage once, albeit a slightly higher amount than shipping a single issue would cost. Perhaps in this manner you will save enough on postage to actually make a profit and I will have a year's worth of Photoworld to peruse in around 9 months' time (assuming that the first of my issues already is sitting on a shelf somewhere in your headquarters). What say you to this idea?

Meanwhile, I'd like to thank you for providing this place where those of us who are new to Sony/Konica/Minolta can learn from those of you with experience. I appreciate it very much!

BassPilot

[David Kilpatrick]

It's not quite that bad. Posting one issue to you costs £2.45 - about $5. But that's only for the first magazine I send out, from our own franking machine in an envelope etc. The remaining three issues for the year go by Airstream, which cuts the cost by a variable amount (the more I send, the bigger the discount). We could save even more using surface mail but I prefer our readers all round the world to get the magazine within a few days of printing.

Of course, the magazine itself costs money to print, but there has never been a time when litho print was cheaper, and we have no overheads - everything is done on my Mac up to sending the files for CTP (computer platemaking without needing any film separations). So every subscription genuinely does count, there is a margin, it's not as workable for overseas subs as UK subs, but it is still viable.

David

[BassPilot]

Today I put my money where my mouth is. I have subscribed to Photoworld and look forward to receiving my first issue. Now perhaps a little personal history is in order:

My father was a commercial photographer in Evansville, Indiana in the 1950s and 60s. He had a fairly booming business taking photographs for advertising and I remember spending summer days in his studio helping him develop 8 x 10 prints and move them over to his big gas-fired print dryer. I can still smell some of the chemicals -- not sure which one sticks in my memory the most. I enjoyed being there and probably would have enjoyed learning more about photography from him had he not died in 1965 when I was thirteen years old. However, I am certain that I wouldn't be as interested in photography as I am now had I not had a photographer for a dad.

I also have an English connection. My half-sister lived in England for a few years during the early 1960s and my parents and I visited Beverly and her family twice, once when I was 7 and once when I was 9. We traveled extensively by automobile all over England, Scotland and Ireland, and my dad shot 35mm slide film the whole time we were there. I still have many of the slides and treasure them greatly. They have held up remarkably well over the years. I want to return to England someday and my wife and I have been saving for the trip for a good while now.

I purchased a Sony Alpha 350 DSLR in March after much research and considerable debate about the merits of Sony over the other brands. I opted for the double-lens kit for now, since I am learning as I go and probably wouldn't have known which lenses to choose at this early stage of the game. I have been very happy with the A350, and I think that I am progressing in my ability as a photographer, with help from various sites like this one and also from Gary Friedman's excellent book on the A350.

I am also a musician and have enjoyed using the A350 to capture images at a few concerts this spring and summer. I have seen your YouTube clips, David, and enjoyed your music very much. I have a couple of friends here in Kentucky who play in a similar style and think you would enjoy meeting each other. In this neck of the woods the Merle Travis/Chet Atkins thumb-style of guitar playing still has a sizable audience.

I really appreciate having this website as a resource for my photographic education. Thanks again to all involved!

BassPilot

[David Kilpatrick]

Interesting story, BassPilot - I was lucky in that my father lived into his 80s. My mother's elder brother died rather younger, but when I was at school and he was in retirement, he dug out a Leitz Valoy enlarger from his attic and gave it to me. He would have given me his old Leica too but couldn't find it. My father then did something I now appreciate more after bringing up a family - he moved all the coal out of our large coal-house which you could get at from inside the house, cleaned it out, and fitted it up with benches and wiring as a darkroom. The coal went into what used to be the coke-house for the hothouse boiler in the garden (this was a big house but old-fashioned) and from then on, you had to go outside to get coal.

Since then I have ruined every home I have owned by converting rooms into darkrooms, but now I don't use the darkroom any more, which is a pity.

We visited Kentucky briefly in 1999 - there was a particularly good guitar for sale in Pittsburgh, so Shirley and I flew in to Baltimore, hired a car, and drove through Maryland, then down the Shenandoah Valley, to Roanoke, Bristol, turned north through Kentucky (stopped by a cop for speeding but let off with a friendly word, and help finding a motel), up to Lafayette, then a hard drive north to collect the guitar and a much worse one back to Baltimore through the Cumberland Gap (I decided to try using smaller roads on the map!). Shirley used the first Tamron 28-200mm lens on that trip, this type of lens was a novelty; I used my Minolta CLE bodies with 28mm, 40mm and 90mm Minolta lenses and a 135mm f/4.5 Elmar, taking no SLR.

David