Won a plastic Agfa in some boy scout contest, which had three settings: flowers, person or mountains, for three different apertures I guess. The shot I remember most, taken with that one, was a beautiful 6 x 6cm positive of a german steam locomotive, on a schooltrip to that country. Unfortunately, the camera disappeared in the Rhine on a boattrip.
I then inherited a Voigtländer Vito B 24x36mm camera from my father- this one had rings for aperture, shutter and distance! - which served me well and got me some bright Kodachrome positives, for over decades - fully mechanical, no batteries nor any other electronic stuff.
My brother gave me his Yashica slr with a set of lenses when he switched to Ricoh, I don´t remember I used it much, nor any pictures I took with it. Much prefered the Voigtländer compact!
Following that, I could at last invest into my first self purchased reflex, being a Minolta Dynax 7000i. Followed years later by a 700si. Those granted me exceptionally bright positives and made me explore self development and printing in the bathroom, on Cibachrome for color prints from diapositives (Kodachrome 25 and 64, Velvia), Illford paper for black and white prints.
Not before 2004 did I put some hasardous steps in the world of digital photography - I was of course still not convinced it could beat film - but a sweepstake at the office on a redundant Sony Mavica MVC-CD500 got me one. I must say I was impressed, very much by the capacity of the (rewritable!) minidisc (53 shots!) but not enough to leave my film cameras behind. It became the standard "always in the rucksack" kind of a compact though, but I kept shooting film for the more serious work... Opinions on that differ of course.
I decided the 7D was too expensive and still did not match Kodachrome, neither did the 5D of course. I was desparate when (Konica -) Minolta decided to give up and sold to Sony, here I sat with a few lenses and no more future for them! Somehow I didn´t even consider switching - my lenses weren´t that costly - as I always and still love(d) my Dynaxes.
Then Sony brought the α100... Promoted it heavily on every other occasion, I got mine for a fair price in 2006 on a Swiss national trade show, not far from SonyStyle levels - street in Switzerland is usually about 25% lower - but with a five years warranty included (which btw I had to call to the rescue very recently on the 0x5b error issue, service and repair delivered without any problem). I must confess the film cameras hardly ever came out of their closet, in fact only when wanting a wider shot with my Sigma 12-24 than the α100 allowed me to.
I was smart enough (or stupid, my wallet did resent it) to not fall in the trap of buying dedicated (APS-C sensor) lenses, the 3 purchased since have purposefully been full-frame ready, I was about sure it wouldn´t be long and in any case was still thinking of the film Dynaxes. And I was right, am now the proud owner of Sony´s α900 flagship camera, started gathering the funds as soon as it was announced, could buy it much earlier than I thought possible, begin this year, due to its unexpected low price tag (to me anyway). Funny enough, it´s heavier than my film bodies, but who cares?
By now, I have over 15.000 digital pictures in Aperture, more than shot during my whole life before! Meanwhile also discovered SmugMug, mainly used for sharing the bulk with family and friends. Trying to (find the time to) organize public sections also, that´s the hard part; it´s the lowest priority between everything else, I´m afraid.
Thanks for reading!
